Lowry says he had no role in Tipperary land deals

The series of purchases included land sold by businessman and former Lowry associate William Carroll

THE INDEPENDENT TD for North Tipperary, Michael Lowry, has said he had no role in a series of land deals during the boom years in Tipperary involving Northern Ireland property developer Seán Devine.

The series of purchases included land sold by a Tipperary businessman and former business associate of Deputy Lowry, William Carroll, as well as land close to where Lowry lives in Holycross, Co Tipperary.

Lowry and Carroll were partners in a property deal in Wigan, England, in the late 1990s that involved an English company called Vineacre. Devine and Lowry are partners in a Dublin company established in 2009 called GDLC Business Consultants Ltd.

Devine is a former business associate of Kevin Phelan, an Omagh-based businessman who was paid money in 2002 so as not to undermine misleading evidence given to the Moriarty tribunal about other property deals in England in the late 1990s that were being investigated by the tribunal.

One payment was referenced to Vineacre and the tribunal was told it was in relation to fees claimed by Phelan for work done for the company.

The solicitor who acted for Vineacre was English solicitor Christopher Vaughan while Phelan, who operates as a land scout, also had dealings with the company.

Both Vaughan and Phelan featured in the tribunal report as they both acted in land purchases in Mansfield and Cheadle in England in the late 1990s which, Justice Michael Moriarty decided, were an effort by businessman Denis O’Brien to confer a benefit on Lowry. (These land deals did not involve Vineacre.)

Likewise, Vaughan and Phelan were involved as solicitor and land scout respectively in dealings in Doncaster which, the judge found, at one stage involved an intention by O’Brien to confer a benefit on Lowry.

By 2002 Phelan was in dispute with all the parties involved over fees he said he was due. Although he refused to give evidence to the tribunal, he did, in disputes with parties whom he said owed him money, produce documents that appeared to contradict evidence to the tribunal.

In his report, Justice Moriarty concluded that payments totalling Stg £65,000 by Vineacre to Phelan were linked to the production by Phelan of an explanation for certain documents that was “contrived and untrue”.

Most of the money was paid in April 2002, when the tribunal was, among other matters, examining whether it had been given altered documents designed to deceive the tribunal as to the involvement of Lowry in the Mansfield and Cheadle transactions. The tribunal did not learn of the payments until a considerable time later.

A solicitor acting for Vineacre told the tribunal the payments were linked to fees due to Phelan. However, the judge concluded that the timing of the payments was linked to a “choreographed falsehood” that led to the untrue explanations being produced for the tribunal.

The falsehood was “not one in which Phelan would have agreed to participate, but for the payment of those fees”, he found.

The agreement involving the payments to Phelan was negotiated by Lowry’s accountant, Denis O’Connor, a partner with the Dublin accountancy firm Brophy Butler Thornton, the judge found. He also found that O’Connor was acting as Lowry’s agent at the time.

In August 2002, O’Connor was involved in negotiating a payment of Stg £150,000 to Phelan, this time by an O’Brien company called Westferry, which owned the Doncaster transaction. Again Justice Moriarty concluded that the payment was primarily intended to ensure that Phelan would not undermine the false version of events concerning Lowry’s involvement in the Mansfield, Cheadle and Doncaster transactions.

Vineacre was incorporated in 1999 and dissolved last year. Lowry and O’Connor were the directors and shareholders. James White, of Two Mile Borris, Co Tipperary, was a director up to 2001.

Filings for Dunlix Investments (Ireland) Ltd, a Dublin company incorporated in August 2005, show its owners, Devine and Northern businessman Paul Blee, signed a contract to buy land in Templemore, Co Tipperary, the previous month. The company registered a mortgage with Ulster Bank secured against the land. In June 2006, the company registered a mortgage with Irish Nationwide against the same land.

In July 2006, it registered a mortgage against land in Holycross, Co Tipperary. In August 2006, the company registered mortgages against land outside Thurles that it bought from Carroll, who had himself bought the land in 2005.

In February 2007, it bought land in Borrisokane and in August 2007 it bought land in Terryglass, Co Tipperary. Planning permission for houses on the Terryglass land was granted in 2009.

Dunlix also bought land close to the Ikea site in Ballymun, Dublin, in September 2006. This site is now earmarked to be a stop along the proposed Metro North. The vendors included a company that was part of the Cunningham Group. Mortgage documents filed by Dunlix indicate its only other land purchase was a site in Co Sligo. Lowry told The Irish Times he had no role in, and did not facilitate any of, the Tipperary land purchases.

GDLC Business Consultants, of which both Devine and Lowry are shareholders, along with two others, was incorporated in 2009. Lowry has refused to say what the company’s purpose is other than to say it has never traded. “It’s none of your business,” he said. He said because it had never traded he was not obliged to list it in the annual Oireachtas register of members’ interests. TDs are required to list company directorships in the register but Lowry did not register his GDLC directorship in the 2009 or 2010 registers.

Devine and Phelan were directors of a Bolton company called Omega Property Development Ltd, which was incorporated in 2003 and dissolved in 2008.

Efforts to contact Devine and Carroll were not successful. The Seán Devine Group, based in Strabane, is an established construction and property development business, with residential and commercial projects in Northern Ireland and in Britain.