TD claims High Court verdict is not really a defeat

Mr Liam Lawlor TD is expected to appear before the Flood tribunal within the next fortnight following the High Court's instruction that he do so. The former Fianna Fail TD is expected to appear at a public session of the tribunal.

Mr Lawlor is due to consult his legal team today about a possible appeal to the Supreme Court but an appeal seems unlikely given the emphatic nature of Mr Justice Smyth's ruling. "I propose to attend at the tribunal at a date and time to be fixed in accordance with the judgment of Mr Justice Smyth," Mr Lawlor told a press conference yesterday evening. However, when asked later about a possible appeal, he answered: "I haven't ruled it in or out." Despite the court's order for him both to appear at the tribunal and to produce financial records going back to 1964, the West Dublin TD appeared to claim victory - or at least the avoidance of defeat - from the court ruling.

"I didn't lose today - the order has been amended," he said, in reference to Mr Justice Smyth's ruling to exclude documents dating from before 1964, when the Planning Act was passed. Mr Lawlor was 20 years of age in that year.

Mr Lawlor claimed this was a "substantial amendment" to the tribunal's order of last June, which required him to produce a variety of documents, with no restriction in dates. These included details of his financial accounts, his company interests and matters relating to the tax amnesty, which he availed of in 1993.

For the first time, Mr Lawlor revealed that he got two "political contributions" of £30,000 and £44,000 from National Toll Roads in the early 1990s. "My late father and the late Tom Roche [chairman of NTR] were friends for 30 years," he said. "They supported me in the 90s [but] never asked me to make any decision in their favour or do anything for them."

Mr Lawlor strongly attacked the tribunal, claiming that 100 interviews carried out by tribunal lawyers in private were "illegal" because the chairman was not present. He said it was "absolutely outrageous" that the tribunal had described his statement on Quarryvale as inadequate.

"I can't make up what they want to hear," he said, "all I can do is tell them the truth. That's what I'm telling them in my statement."

He accused the tribunal of reading out a "three-hour diatribe" of correspondence earlier this month that "was purported to be private" and criticised the "incoherence" of the Gogarty phase of the tribunal.

Referring to the tribunal's decision to refer his non-compliance with its summonses to the DPP, Mr Lawlor said he presumed this file would be recalled so there wouldn't be "any more timewasting in this context".

He also attacked Mr Tom Gilmartin, the Luton-based Irish property developer who first proposed building a massive shopping centre at Quarryvale in west Dublin and who claims he paid Mr Lawlor £35,000 in 1988 in relation to another project.

Mr Gilmartin "thought he could ride a coach-and-four through the planning system", said Mr Lawlor. "This man expected he should be able to build, in his own inimitable west of Ireland way, a million and half square feet [shopping centre] and add another half a million.

"I explained in half an hour that that was totally out of the question and he got very upset about it and suggested that a lot of my senior colleagues were very supportive of it. I was just being logical. This man unfortunately had a big dream and lost it all through no fault of anyone in Dublin except probably his own fault."

Mr Gilmartin couldn't make "a scintilla of an allegation against me", Mr Lawlor declared.

Asked about payments he received from lobbyist Mr Frank Dunlop, Mr Lawlor said that when Mr Dunlop was starting his own business it was he [Mr Lawlor] who gave him financial support. He declined to join the company but gave any "advice, assistance or introduction" he could.

"I was out of the council and Frank's activities in the 90s had nothing to do with me," he said.

Regarding the tax amnesty, he said he discharged a capital gains tax liability of £30,000 in the 1993 amnesty which arose from his activity as an underwriter in Lloyd's. He did not avail of the amnesty in any other way.

Mr Lawlor said he had received calls of support from all over the country.