Gallagher `just wanted to build good low-cost houses'

George Redmond "idolised" the building developer, Mr Matt Gallagher, the Flood Tribunal heard yesterday. He told the tribunal Mr Gallagher "was a wonderful man".

"I had wonderful admiration for him. He wanted to do so much good. He just wanted to build houses. That was all he wanted to do, low-cost houses, good houses. I idolised the man."

The tribunal also heard that Mr Redmond had told the Criminal Assets Bureau (CAB) he had received between £10,000 and £15,000 per annum from companies connected to Mr Gallagher. Counsel for the tribunal, Mr Des O'Neill SC, read from the statement Mr Redmond made to the bureau on March 18th last year. At that time, Mr Redmond told the tribunal the Gallagher brothers, James, Hubert and Matt, had paid him £10,000 to £15,000 per annum. Over the course of a number of years, he would go to the Watson estate the Gallaghers were developing in Killiney in south Co Dublin to be paid in the drawing office there.

However, Mr Redmond told the tribunal yesterday it probably had not been that much during the 1970s and that he never meant to convey that he had "connections with all three brothers". While he knew Matt and former TD James, he had never met Hubert, he told Mr O'Neill.

Mr Redmond described to the tribunal how he was introduced to Mr Gallagher by his former colleague, Mr Paddy Treacy, who left the county council to work for the Gallagher Group in the mid-1960s. He had known who Mr Gallagher was already because the building developer "had a lot of dealings with the corporation in those days".

Later, he became so friendly with Mr Gallagher that he was a "frequent visitor" to his stud farm at Hollywood Rath.

He told the tribunal he also wanted to withdraw his description in the CAB statement of Mr Treacy as being "the bagman" in the 1970s and 1980s.

However, he agreed that he had advised the Gallagher group on planning appeals. He said Mr Treacy had lost touch with the intricacies of the planning laws after he left the council. The planning system "became so bureaucratic and legalistic . . . it had become immensely more complex". As a result, Mr Treacy's knowledge had become "out of date. As a very dear friend, I had no hesitation in giving him any help I could."

Mr Treacy was paying for "what he thought was good advice" and what Mr Redmond considered to be his "very realistic" attitude to planning matters.

He agreed that one of Mr Gallagher's companies had built his house in Castleknock in 1971. A Gallagher company had also built a two-storey extension to Mr Redmond's home, which included two bedrooms and a fireplace. Mr Redmond had paid for both the house and the extension.

However, he denied he could have had influence over the outcome of a planning application.

"For me to show any interest in an application in my view would have been to give it the kiss of death."