Flood report to urge new laws on planning

Significant new anti-corruption laws and changes in planning regulations are recommended in the report of the Flood tribunal, which is expected to be published within days.

The culmination of five years' investigation into allegations of planning corruption by the tribunal chairman, Mr Justice Flood, is expected to appear within the next week, and possibly as early as tomorrow.

The report will refocus political debate on the issue of sleaze, and is likely to increase political pressure on the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern.

Opposition parties are certain to call for a Dáil debate on the report when the House reconvenes next month.

The report is expected to be critical of some of the evidence given by former Fianna Fáil minister Mr Ray Burke, and his builder friends, Mr Tom Brennan and Mr Joe McGowan.

The three men failed to disclose £125,000 in offshore payments to Mr Burke between 1982 and 1985 until tribunal lawyers discovered them.

Much of the report deals with the tribunal's investigations into Mr Burke, who resigned in October 1997. It examines the circumstances of a number of large payments he received, notably £30,000 from Mr James Gogarty of JMSE in June 1989; £35,000 from Mr Oliver Barry of Century Radio in May 1989; and payments totalling over £200,000 from Brennan and McGowan in the 1970s and 1980s.

Mr Burke has always maintained that the donations he received during his career were legitimate political contributions.

Mr Justice Flood will have to decide whether any or all of the payments to Mr Burke amount to corruption or were designed to "compromise the disinterested performance of public duties", as set out in the terms of reference of the tribunal.

His report, which also makes recommendations in the areas of local government and ethics in public office, is expected to highlight the difficulties of proving corruption under present laws. Many of these date back to Victorian times.

The report could provide further embarrassment for the Government at a time when it is under fire for allegedly misleading the public before the general election about cutbacks that are now under way.

One section will deal with the investigations ordered by Mr Ahern into the allegations surrounding Mr Burke in June 1997, just before Mr Burke was reappointed to the Cabinet.

At the time, Mr Ahern said he had been "up every tree in north Dublin" investigating Mr Burke, but it has since emerged that he never approached the source of the allegations, Mr Gogarty.

A conflict of evidence between JMSE, which told Mr Ahern's emissary that it had not paid money to Mr Burke, and the developer Mr Michael Bailey, who told the Taoiseach there had been a payment, has not been adequately explained.

The report is also expected to blame the slow progress of the tribunal on delays caused by legal challenges and a lack of co-operation by some witnesses.

Publication will clear the way for the tribunal to resume hearings in the second half of October.

The next module of investigations will deal with allegations of corruption in planning in Dublin in the 1990s. It will focus on claims by former Fianna Fáil press secretary Mr Frank Dunlop that he made substantial payments to politicians in connection with the rezoning of the Quarryvale site in west Dublin.

On publication, the report will be sent to the clerk of the Dáil, Mr Kieran Coughlan, who will place it in the Oireachtas library. It will also be circulated to lawyers for the main parties represented at the tribunal.

It will then be released to the media and the public. It will also be placed on the tribunal website.

The tribunal was established in November 1997 and has sat in public for 337 days. So far it has cost €21.5 million.