O’Callaghan: I made an error in not meeting with Ahern

FORMER taoiseach Albert Reynolds wanted to give £75 million in lottery funds to a national stadium proposed by Cork developer Owen O’Callaghan in 1992, as long as the then finance minister Bertie Ahern agreed.

Mr O’Callaghan told the Mahon tribunal, however, that he erred by approaching other government ministers long before Mr Ahern, who then shot down the idea.

“I made a mistake,” Mr O’Callaghan said. “I went to the minister for sport at the time, I went to the minister for the environment, I went to the taoiseach on quite a few occasions but I never went to the minister for finance officially until November 1994.”

He said it might have been better if he had gone to see Mr Ahern earlier. “Maybe I upset him,” he said.

Mr O’Callaghan proposed the stadium for lands he owned at Neilstown in west Dublin even though at first he didn’t seriously consider completing the plans. He needed to be seen to do something with the site after the town centre zoning it carried was transferred to his other lands at Quarryvale.

“We weren’t 100% serious at the outset, I am the first to admit, but the FAI had put their belief in it.”

Initially the stadium, suggested to him by Liam Lawlor in 1991, was a simple, open-air soccer venue, seating 40,000 and costing £32m, of which he hoped to get £10m from the state.

He was struck by the FAI’s enthusiasm for the project and the general goodwill towards the idea, which he said came during the excitement of the Jack Charlton era between Italia ’90 and USA ’94.

So when, in mid-1992, he realised the idea was not financially viable, he decided to focus on developing an all-purpose stadium.

Later, with the involvement of a US finance firm introduced to him by Mr Reynolds, he decided to add a retractable roof and floor to broaden the venue’s uses.

It would cost £60m to build, receive £3m a year in National Lottery funds for 25 years and transfer to state ownership after that time.

Former government press secretary Frank Dunlop was hired to lobby for the project but Mr O’Callaghan was emphatic that Mr Dunlop did not meet Mr Ahern to discuss it.

Mr O’Callaghan vigorously denied under questioning by tribunal counsel Patricia Dillon that he tried to get special tax designation for it. Ms Dillon asked why he was so anxious to distance himself from the tax designation suggestion.

Mr O’Callaghan said he would have had to meet Mr Ahern about it and he knew he had not discussed it with him because of the project being rejected after almost three years of work on it: “That is why I am so sure I did not go to him, I can assure you.”