It’s a Dunne deal, so it’s going on and on

YOU have to hand it to Sean Dunne. He has an irrepressible spirit. Whatever brickbats fate hurls at him, he just gets up, brushes himself down, and carries on. Some might say that he typifies what made this country great.

For the last month, Dunner, as he is known, has loomed large in the round hall of the Four Courts. He hasn’t been present himself. He’s too busy for that. But his spirit has permeated court three, where Judge Mary Laffoy is hearing a case she has described as “ludicrous” and “ridiculous”.

The action is being taken by a residents’ management company against a woman who runs a contract cleaning business. The main witness for the plaintiff is Dunne’s right hand man, Tom Martin.

The defendant is Gina Farrell, a former friend and business associate of Dunne’s, with whom he has had a bitter falling out. She has been accompanied to court by a former financial director of one of Dunne’s companies.

On other days, Farrell has been accompanied by a man who had a relationship with Dunne’s ex-wife. The case has pitched against each other people whom Dunne would describe as his ally and his enemies. Yet there is no sign of the man himself.

He is nearly 5,000 kilometres away on the east coast of the US, building a new life, while his debts have been socialised into NAMA, where the citizen picks up the bill.

Dunne was the poster boy for the illusory boom. A self-made developer, he built up a portfolio through the bubble years, culminating in the purchase of the Jury’s site in Ballsbridge for €275 million in 2006.

He has said he arrived at the purchase price by asking his wife, Gayle Killilea, to pick a number between 54 and 75, while on holiday in Thailand. She plumped for 75 and he phoned in the bid.

Killilea, his second wife, is a socialite and former gossip columnist whom he met at the Galway Races, where both were guests in the fabled Fianna Fáil tent. At the height of the bubble, he was described by the Sunday Independent as “the man who epitomises the fearless optimism of the Celtic Tiger economy”.

Dunne was close to the father of the phantom Celtic Tiger, Bertie Ahern. Ahern invited Dunne to attend his addresses to the Houses of Parliament in London, and Congress in Washington, before he resigned as Taoiseach.

When the economic house of cards came tumbling down, Dunner and his family relocated to the US, where fortune favours the brave. They now reside at an upmarket address in Connecticut. Eight days ago, NAMA placed the developer’s empire into receivership.

Meanwhile, it’s all fun and games in the High Court. Dunne is not personally party to the legal action. The plaintiff, Hollybrook Management, manages luxury apartments in the salubrious Dublin suburb of Foxrock.

The company is nominally owned by the apartment owners, but they weren’t consulted on the decision to take a legal action in their name.

Dunne’s Mountbrook Homes built the apartments and has also underwritten €150,000 held by the court as security for costs of the legal action.

Hollybrook is claiming that Gina Farrell was involved in a fraudulent breach of contract. She was contracted to clean the common areas in the complex. The areas were cleaned. Nobody ever complained. But Hollybrook maintains she agreed to supply two cleaners five days a week and that she doctored log books to falsely claim that the two cleaners were present every day.

Hollybrook paid leading accountancy firm, KPMG, €71,000 to examine the log books, yet the claim being made in relation to the alleged alteration to the log book is €19,000.

The total claim being made by Hollybrook against Farrell’s company is €122,000, of which over €50,000 is calculated as interest accruing since the alleged fraud.

The legal cost of the action itself, at this stage, is running towards €500,000.

On the first day of the hearing, June 22, Judge Laffoy pleaded for mediation, or at least some sense. The case had been scheduled for five days.

“It does seem ridiculous,” she said.

“Five days-plus to recover €122,000, It really doesn’t make sense. It makes no commercial sense whatsoever.”

She later called the decision to proceed “ludicrous”. That was when the case was scheduled for five days. It is now running for over 15. You can see where the judge is coming from.

As might be expected, there is a subtext to the case. Farrell first went to work for one of Dunne’s companies over 15 years ago. Their working relationship grew. She organised the cleaning of his family home, on the posh Shrewsbury Road.

At the height of the bubble, following Dunne’s marriage to Killilea, as Dunne ascended to his master of the universe status, relations between the pair began to crumble. Farrell had remained close to Dunne’s first wife, Jennifer.

On April 10, 2005, Farrell went to Harcourt Square Garda Station and made a statement alleging that Dunne had hacked into her personal phone. The complaint was investigated and phone records examined.

A number of calls from phones associated with Dunne companies were found to have accessed Farrell’s number, using the digit five between the code and the number. This allows for access to the number’s voicemail if a specific password has not been set up. This is what is called phone hacking, the kind of activity at the heart of Rupert Murdoch’s travails in Britain.

A file was sent to the DPP, who decided against a prosecution. The calls at issue were not made from any phone registered to Dunne personally.

Farrell is pursing a civil action about the alleged hacking, which is scheduled for a High Court hearing in the autumn.

This is the background against which Dunne is underwriting a legal action, described as “ludicrous”, which could financially ruin Gina Farrell.

If that were to happen, her prospects of taking the action over the alleged hacking would be severely hampered.

But Dunne too is no longer rich, and as such may not have access to the resources that often sees the law turn to putty in the hands of rich men.

Indeed, he is in hock for the odd billion.

Last week it was revealed that NAMA has employed forensic investigators Kroll to ferret out Dunne’s assets around the world, on account of all the money he owes the Irish people.

While NAMA has to run around the world chasing down Dunne’s money on our behalf, the man himself is living it up in Connecticut, in a beautiful house with his beautiful life, starting out on a brand new business day.

At the same time, he is underwriting a costly legal action back in the old country that is taking up precious court time.

An outsider observing the whole farce might note that some of those who were in the vanguard of the disastrous property bubble in this country have been able to carry on regardless since the whole house came tumbling down.