Gardai investigated sewerage plan decision

A controversial sewerage and drainage scheme - believed to have enhanced the value of the Kinsealy estate - was once the subject…

A controversial sewerage and drainage scheme - believed to have enhanced the value of the Kinsealy estate - was once the subject of a Garda investigation.

In 1989, the Department of the Environment ordered Dublin County Council to draw up plans for a drainage and sewerage scheme for Baskin Cottages, close to Mr Charles Haughey's estate.

The works were to pass through the Kinsealy estate, greatly adding to its development potential and hence its price. There was an outcry over the decision, at a time of severe fiscal restraint when other projects were being long fingered. Allegations about the scheme actually led to a Garda investigation in the early 1990s, which found nothing illegal in the decision.

The Garda report showed that just four months after Mr Haughey became Taoiseach in 1987, the Department of Environment wrote to Dublin County Council requesting that the council look at the possibility of extending a proposed sewerage scheme to Baskin cottages.

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Two senior officials from the council recommended against this but the Department decided to proceed with the scheme.