There can be no doubt that the arrest of Mr George Redmond at Dublin Airport, after he returned from the Isle of Man with some £300,000 in cash and bank drafts, has come as a shock. However, there can also be little doubt that it has spread a ripple of glee among some of his former colleagues and subordinates over the years.
For a long time before he retired as assistant city and county manager in 1989 they had suspicions about Mr Redmond. That same year, he was one of the subjects of an extensive Garda inquiry into allegations of bribery and corruption in the planning process, though this investigation proved largely inconclusive, with just one lowly official pleading guilty.
Mr Redmond (74) joined Dublin Corporation as a clerk in 1941, straight from school in St Joseph's, Marino, and worked his way up through the ranks. He was typical of a whole generation of senior local authority officials in that he never worked in the private sector and spent most of his 48-year career in the same organisation.
Before he became de facto county manager, Mr Redmond was in charge of planning both in the city and the county, and was thus deeply involved in making decisions on day-to-day development control. It was effectively on his say-so that planning permission was granted and made subject to whatever set of conditions.
There was not much happening on the construction front in Dublin at the time; the current boom would have been unimaginable. Mr Redmond was very "pro-development". He was also a strong supporter of the corporation's roads programme, which was responsible for destroying much of the city's historic fabric.
In 1980, when he was promoted to assistant city and county manager, Mr Redmond was assigned responsibility for running the county while the then city manager, Mr Frank Feely, concentrated on the Dublin Corporation area. Planning was administered on a joint basis by another assistant city and county manager, Mr John Prendergast.
As de facto county manager, Mr Redmond interested himself in all of Dublin County Council's activities; indeed, he would have had a responsibility to do so. He sat in at every council meeting, delivering his views with an authoritative air and proving more than a match for councillors who disagreed with some of the actions he took.
He would have known all of the major developers personally, having dealt with them for many years. These would have included the Gallagher Group, which built his house at Deerpark in Castleknock, as well as Brennan and McGowan, Green Property, Bovale Developments and JMSE, the latter two now featuring at the Flood tribunal.
According to its main witness, Mr James Gogarty, Mr Redmond was to become a consultant to JMSE after he retired as county manager. He has also said in evidence that, when this offer was withdrawn, Mr Redmond was paid £15,000 by Mr Joseph Murphy jnr, the company's managing director, over tea in Clontarf Castle in 1989.
Mr Gogarty maintains that Mr Redmond was paid £12,000 after he had arranged to have the duration of a JMSE planning permission in Swords extended, thus saving the company more than £100,000 in new fees and development levies. He had also "stuck his neck out" over JMSE's demolition of Turvey House, an important listed building.
Mr Redmond attempted to steer clear of controversies over land rezoning, leaving that to the councillors exercising their only really powerful function. At times, he worked with them by agreeing to material contraventions of the county plan to facilitate this or that development; at other times, he supported the planners' reservations.
In September 1988, Mr Redmond was among the senior Dublin officials summoned to a meeting in Government Buildings with the then Taoiseach, Mr Charles Haughey, to discuss the Government's dismay over the absence of construction activity in the city. The others were Mr Feely, Mr Prendergast and the deputy city manager, Mr Paddy Morrissey.
It has emerged that one of the main purposes of this 90-minute meeting, at which Mr Haughey was accompanied by Mr Padraig Flynn, Mr Ray Burke and Mr Ray MacSharry, was to underline the need to facilitate the major retail projects planned by Mr Tom Gil martin, the Sligo-born developer who maintains he paid £50,000 to Mr Flynn in June 1989.
Mr Redmond's most dramatic moment came in March 1989, just months before he retired, when he told the council he had earlier signed a cheque for £1.9 million in planning compensation to Grange Developments Ltd, a Brennan and McGowan company, after it had threatened to have the county council put into receivership.
He had a laissez-faire view of planning. All three new towns to the west of Dublin - Tallaght, Lucan/Clondalkin and Blanch ardstown - were to have their own town centres, including a shopping centre sufficient in size to cater for their needs. What each of them got, however, was a regional-scale shopping centre.
In 1989, after the county council agreed to double the size of the Blanchardstown centre to 750,000 square feet at the behest of its developers, the Green Property Company, Mr Redmond explained this decision by saying: "These fellows have done their sums and this is what they believe will work. Who are we to say it won't?"