Ex-airport chief tells of 'devastating' ruling

A Department of Transport policy statement which could have blocked controversial developments near Dublin airport in 1993 was not issued until several days after councillors voted to rezone lands in the area owned by a business consortium, a former Aer Rianta executive has told the Mahon tribunal.

Former Dublin airport manager Brian Byrne said that Aer Rianta had received a draft copy of the policy statement in early August 1993.

However the document was not sent to Dublin County Council until October 6th, one week after the vote to confirm the rezoning of 24 acres of lands near the airport owned by a consortium known as Cargobridge.

Under legislation councillors would have had to take account of ministerial policy statements.

Asked why he thought the document had not been sent to Dublin County Council until October, Mr Byrne said that he could only assume that the then minister, Brian Cowen, had decided to issue it at that time for reasons known to himself.

However, the former secretary general of the Department of Transport, John Loughrey, said that the statement concerned was not a ministerial "sledgehammer" which could direct the council. Rather, he said, it was a departmental document in relation to safety issues.

He said that he had made the judgment call to issue the document and that almost certainly Mr Cowen would not have seen it. Nor did he believe that the minister would have been aware of the draft sent to Aer Rianta.

The tribunal is investigating the rezoning of the Cargobridge lands, as well as contacts between the lobbyist Frank Dunlop and the Department of Transport and Mr Cowen in relation to the granting of a right of way which allowed commercial development on the site.

Aer Rianta had strongly opposed both the rezoning and the granting of the right of way.

Mr Byrne said that the decision by Mr Cowen to grant the right of way to Cargobridge had had a "devastating effect" on Aer Rianta management, who felt abandoned.

"We were enhancing hugely people who had speculativelybought lands for their own financial gain and here we were accommodating that by a process that helped them in that regard".

He said that it also "encouraged anybody else that it was fair game to acquire land around the airport, apply political pressure and you could be successful".

He said that Aer Rianta considered the £160,000 price charged by the department for the right of way - based on a Valuation Office report - to be "ludicrous". Aer Rianta valued the right of way at £1 million.

Mr Loughrey said that official policy towards State companies was evolving in the early 1990s in the light of developments at European level.

He said that it was a reasonable agenda for Aer Rianta to seek additional land for future development. However he said that there was no God-given right that it should have control of these lands. He said that the litmus test was whether it was part of the core business.

He said the department's attitude had moved to one where it would support core business to the hilt, but that "with adventures outside your core business you take your chances, because appropriate private-sector development may be the answer rather than an accumulation of State companies operating out of a captive core business for which they have a monopoly."

Meanwhile, it has emerged that Aer Rianta suggested to the Department of Transport in 1992 that a mystery company which owned part of Cargobridge was linked to the Johnston Mooney and O'Brien site controversy.

It suggested that Abervanta Ltd was "one of the intermediate companies" reputed to be involved in the purchase of the site in Ballsbridge.

The tribunal believes that Abervanta may have been owned by Ciaran Haughey, the son of the former taoiseach. The Johnston Mooney and O'Brien site was at the centre of controversy after it was purchased and subsequently sold on to Telecom Éireann within a short period of time at a substantial profit.