Port company chairman rejects executive's 'conspiracy' claims

Chairman of Shannon Foynes Port Company, Kieran McSweeney, has rejected claims by the port company chief executive, Brian Byrne, that an investigation into allegations against Mr Byrne and non-executive director of the company, Morgan Leahy, was motivated by "a conspiracy" to derail the Limerick Docklands Initiative (LDI).

Mr McSweeney's denial was contained in legal documents put before the High Court yesterday. The court has heard that the allegations against Mr Byrne and Mr Leahy by Limerick haulier Brian Cosgrave were made on August 26th last year, after which the port company board set up a committee - the Guilfoyle committee - to investigate them.

Mr Byrne has been suspended by the board of the port company pending the investigation.

Full details of the allegations by Mr Cosgrave have not been outlined in court but Mr Byrne said in an affidavit they were to the effect that he and Mr Leahy had abused their positions to secure personal gain, had orchestrated a vendetta against Mr Cosgrave and had treated him unfairly.

He and Mr Leahy have rejected the claims as malicious and totally untrue. Mr Byrne said the allegations were part of an attempt by Mr Cosgrave and property developer John Hegarty to derail the LDI.

In proceedings before Mr Justice Frank Clarke, both men are seeking an order restraining the investigation into the allegations by the Guilfoyle committee. Both men claim the committee has been compromised by "secret contacts" with the board and has acted unfairly towards them.

They say they are willing to co-operate with what their counsel described as a truly independent investigation.

Yesterday, Gerard Hogan SC, for the port company, denied that the investigation committee had acted unfairly or that there had been anything sinister in the approach of the port company board or of the investigation committee in dealing with the allegations by Mr Cosgrave.

Counsel said Mr Byrne and his counsel had presented an "Ian Fleming" version of events relating to the investigation committee to the court, when the reality was "much more banal". He said there was no improper contact between the committee and the port company, although there had to be some contact for information purposes between both bodies.

Mr Hogan also outlined that, after Mr Byrne's suspension, members of management of the port company had expressed concern about Mr Byrne's style of management and about being excluded from the company's decision-making process. The board had resolved to send those concerns to the investigation committee but the latter had concluded that these were outside its existing terms of reference.

A separate investigation into a number of issues had been completed by another committee, the Bugler committee, which had delivered a sealed report on its investigation, which report awaited the outcome of these court proceedings.

Mr Hogan also denied that there was "massive animus" between a Limerick firm of solicitors that acted for the port company, Holmes O'Malley Sexton, and Mr Byrne. There had been a sharp disagreement between the firm and Mr Byrne about legal business going elsewhere, he added, but this was not unusual in the legal profession.

Counsel said the port company did not dispute that allegations relating to a motorboat of Mr Byrne's were not raised by Mr Cosgrave when he made his initial allegations on August 26th. A contract between the port company and Irish Inland Services Ltd, a company of which Mr Byrne was a director, had been examined by the port company's audit committee.

His side did not know how Mr Cosgrave came into possession of information about the boat, but both Mr McSweeney and Mr John Griffin of the board denied providing that information to Mr Cosgrave, counsel said. Information about the boat was available on the port company's website. The investigation committee had, he added, decided that the boat issue was outside its terms of reference.

Earlier, Paul Gardiner SC, for Mr Byrne and Mr Leahy, said the allegations by Mr Cosgrave were made just two days before a critical meeting of the board of the port company on the LDI. Mr Byrne believed the claims were motivated by a conspiracy to derail the LDI in its current format. While Mr Byrne had wanted the board meeting of the LDI to go on despite the allegations, Mr McSweeney had strongly resisted that and the meeting was "sidetracked completely" as a result of the allegations, counsel said.