A man known to mind his own business

By all accounts Mr Sean Mulryan of Ballymore Homes is likely to be less than thrilled at the possibility of a personal appearance at the Flood tribunal.

In an affidavit to the High Court dated July 2000 Ms Catherine Butler, the one-time special adviser to Mr Charles Haughey, claimed Mr Mulryan effectively sacked her, principally because of her imminent appearance at the Moriarty tribunal.

Ms Butler claimed that Mr Mulryan had said: "Well, we might as well have this conversation now. I have a business to run and I have to protect my business and my reputation, and if you are going to be called before Moriarty it'll have huge implications for me.

"Never mind reading about you in the newspapers - which was very complimentary by the way - I cannot employ you or have you associated with my company - well, not publicly anyway - so I want you to become a self-employed consultant".

As a rapidly growing property development group in the 1980s and 1990s, Ballymore and Sean Mulryan had done business with some of the figures later to appear in Dublin Castle, and it is perhaps not surprising that he would not have wanted to be associated with the allegations surrounding the tribunals.

From a relatively small house-building firm in Ballymore Eustace on the Wicklow-Kildare border in the early 1980s the group rapidly increased its output, building housing estates in Greystones, Co Wicklow, Leixlip and Naas in Co Kildare, Galway and Dublin.

Over the past decade the group has successfully moved into the UK and is associated with the development of large-scale apartment blocks in Westminster and Millennium Harbour in the docklands.

He is now probably the largest Irish developer of homes and offices either in Ireland or the UK.

Mr Mulryan's business was first mentioned in public session at the Flood tribunal in 1997.

A former Dublin County Council employee, recounting how the Murphy Group had avoided an increase in development levies, suggested the deal had benefited Ballymore Homes - which eventually received planning permission on the site - to the tune of €228,000 (£179,600).

But it wasn't unusual that builders would deal with one another, and under Sean Mulryan's direction the group bought the former Baldoyle racecourse and adjoining lands which had been owned by two companies controlled by developer Mr John Byrne, an associate of former Taoiseach, Mr Charles Haughey.

Sean Mulryan's leisure interests seem to lie in the racing world. He sponsors an annual race at Punchestown and owns a number of racehorses.

He is, according to those close to him, a generous man and no stranger to the charity circuit.