Dunlop payments to be examined

The planning tribunal is to begin hearings next month into allegations that Dublin councillors were paid £17,500 in connection with the rezoning of lands at Ballycullen in south Dublin.

Former government press secretary Frank Dunlop is expected to tell the tribunal that brothers Christopher and Gerry Jones gave him the money for disbursement to councillors in the early 1990s.

The tribunal will also examine a £12,500 payment by Christopher Jones to the late Fianna Fáil TD Liam Lawlor. Mr Lawlor concocted an invoice in the name of Comex Trading Corporation to obtain the money, which he said was for "advice received" on the Ballycullen rezoning.

The next module of the tribunal will also look at changes in use of the Jones Group's long-time headquarters at Beech Hill in Clonskeagh. The group sold this site in the mid-1990s and it was subsequently developed as a 200,000 square-foot office park.

Over the past year, the tribunal has been brought to a virtual standstill by litigation from a number of parties. Hearings into the rezoning of Quarryvale have been postponed until legal proceedings brought by Cork developer Owen O'Callaghan have been determined by the High Court, while the Jackson Way and Tom Gilmartin inquiries are similarly stalled.

As a result, tribunal lawyers have decided to begin the "Ballycullen and Beech Hill" module based on Mr Dunlop's allegations, which is expected to be completed in a few months.

The Jones brothers had been trying to have their 77-acre farm at Ballycullen, south of Tallaght, rezoned since the early 1980s, but without success. They argued their holding was no longer viable because of vandalism and trespass.

They sought industrial zoning as their land was close to the proposed M50 but this zoning was overturned before the council adopted the 1983 county plan.

They tried again in 1991, this time for low-density housing and open space, but ran into opposition from planners.

Mr Dunlop then became involved as a lobbyist. The Jones brothers were "two very honourable people who had been completely frustrated by virtue of the fact that they had made application after application and nothing had happened," he has told the tribunal.

In what he described as a "relatively innocent" procedure, he introduced the brothers to local representatives "with whom they had had ongoing difficulties". The £17,500 Mr Dunlop received was disbursed to some councillors as election expenses.

A motion to rezone proposed by Fine Gael's Tom Hand and Don Lydon of Fianna Fáil was passed by 42 votes to 14. The land was later developed as Woodstown Village with 574 houses by Ellier Developments.

According to Mr Dunlop, the land was developed with "more than twice the number of residential units and no facilities".

Christopher Jones, who is 81, has retired. His brother Gerry, who was an associate of Niall Blaney and supported Charles Haughey during the Arms Trial, died in 1999.

The Jones group went into liquidation in 2004.