Alleged £50k payment to Ahern ‘absolute rubbish’

CORK businessman Owen O’Callaghan has described an allegation that he paid £50,000 to former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern for assistance on a property development in west Dublin as “absolute and total rubbish”.

Mr O’Callaghan told the Mahon Tribunal yesterday that he could offer no explanation why another property developer, Tom Gilmartin, would make such a claim about him and Mr Ahern.

“I never gave him a penny,” said Mr O’Callaghan on his third day of giving evidence at Dublin Castle. “It is even a silly question,” he added. But he acknowledged that he stood to gain almost £3m if Mr Gilmartin acquired local authority lands at Quarryvale as a result of an agreement between them.

Mr Gilmartin has told the planning inquiry that Mr O’Callaghan once informed him that Mr Ahern was paid £50,000 for his help in ensuring that Green Property — another development company wanting to build a rival shopping centre in nearby Blanchardstown — would not be in a position to buy council-owned lands at Quarryvale.

Mr Gilmartin claimed that Mr Ahern, who was then Minister for Labour, had got his friend Joe Burke to make inquiries about what was going on after he had complained TD Liam Lawlor and senior council official, George Redmond, were interfering in his attempts to buy lands at Quarryvale.

He claimed Mr Redmond had tipped off Green Property about his plans to obtain the site by private sale from the local authority, resulting in Dublin Corporation putting the site for sale by public tender.

In 1989, Mr Gilmartin submitted a successful £5.1m tender to buy 69 acres of land owned by Dublin Corporation, which were seen as vital for his plans to build a shopping centre at Quarryvale.

Mr O’Callaghan disagreed with Tribunal barrister, Patricia Dillon SC that the £3m he stood to gain from Mr Gilmartin exercising his option to buy out his site for a rival shopping centre in Neilstown was “easy money”.

He rejected her suggestion that he was reluctant to exercise a clause in their agreement to “sterilise” the Quarryvale project because he still hoped to get £3m for his Neilstown site. “It’s so far down the scale it’s hardly worth mentioning,” replied Mr O’Callaghan.

Mr O’Callaghan also said he had no recollection why he had met Liam Lawlor in Leinster House on May 17, 1989. He rejected any suggestion that the meeting might have been linked to complaints made by Mr Gilmartin against the late Fianna Fáil TD.

Mr O’Callaghan said he was not aware that Joe Burke was a councillor with Dublin Corporation who had proposed the motion to sell the local authority’s lands to Mr Gilmartin in June 1989.

He added that he knew nothing about any inquiries which Mr Burke may have made on behalf of Mr Ahern for Mr Gilmartin about the Quarryvale site.

Mr O’Callaghan said he had never had any discussion with Mr Gilmartin about Mr Ahern or Mr Burke. “I’m 99% certain. Both men were never mentioned to me by Mr Gilmartin,” he said.