Tribunal report on sale in April

The Government Publications Office has confirmed that hard copies of the Mahon Tribunal report will not be available until the end of April.

The office said there was a proposed cost price of €25 for the seven-volume report, which runs to 3,270 pages.

Although the office is not taking orders from any customers, about 200 people have logged their details to be notified when it goes on sale to the public.

Several hundred people have also called into the publications office shop on Dublin’s Molesworth St seeking a copy of the report.

Notices informing the public that the report is available to download from the tribunal’s own website (www.planningtribunal.ie) have been placed in the window of the shop.

No spokesperson was available for the tribunal yesterday for information on the number of times the report has been downloaded.

However, it is believed that the website has received thousands of hits by people wishing to access the report on the finances of former taoiseach Bertie Ahern as well as corrupt payments to politicians including former EU commissioner Pádraig Flynn.

The tribunal’s second interim report under the chairmanship of Mr Justice Fergus Flood became a bestselling hit after its publication in Sept 2002.

The report which found that former Fianna Fáil minister Ray Burke received corrupt payments from a number of developers during the 1970s and 1980s was an immediate bestseller.

All 20,000 copies of its first print run were sold out within five days, while over 40,000 hits of the report were recorded on the tribunal’s website. Over 1,200 copies of a CD version were also sold. The report which cost €12 per copy to print had a cover price of just €1 on the instructions of Mr Justice Flood.