Gilmore not embarrassed by wife’s sale of €525k site

LABOUR party leader Eamon Gilmore has said he is not embarrassed by recent revelations that his wife sold a site to the state for €525,000.

His wife, Carol Hanney, who is chief executive of Dún Laoghaire VEC, responded to a public advertisement seeking land for a new school in the village of Killimor, in east Galway back in 2007.

She initially agreed to sell the land back in 2003 for €140,000, but a decision was made at the time not to go ahead with the school.

By the time the project was revisited the cost had risen by €385,000 because of property price inflation.

Mr Gilmore said yesterday that the only time the site was independently valued was before it was eventually sold by his wife. The deal was agreed in 2006 and completed in 2007.

Questioned on the issue, Mr Gilmore said this was land she inherited and “she is as entitled as anybody else to do with it as she sees fit”.

The 2½-acre site was sold to the Office of Public Works (OPW) on behalf of the Department of Education.

Ms Hanney later received €10,000 for a smaller adjoining site for use as a hurling pitch following an approach from the local parish priest.

Asked about the issue on RTE radio yesterday, Mr Gilmore said: “This is land Carol inherited from her late mother. She was approached by the board of management of the school to make the site available. It was publicly advertised by the OPW and independently valued.”

He said he could not recall “any time the Labour party had made an issue of what the spouse of a politician has done with land he or she inherited”.

But he denied it was embarrassing for his party which is the most popular with voters according to the most recent opinion polls. “I’m not embarrassed by it.”

A spokesman for the Department of Education said: “The department has no reason to consider that there was anything abnormal about the transaction concerned.”