Gilmartin claims fresh evidence regarding ministerial meeting

Mahon Tribunal: Property developer Mr Tom Gilmartin says he will be back at the planning tribunal next year with fresh evidence about his claimed meeting with government ministers in Leinster House.

Mr Gilmartin, who has not appeared in Dublin Castle since the summer because of ill-health, says he has new information which he believes will show that the Taoiseach did attend the 1989 meeting. After the meeting, Mr Gilmartin was approached by an unidentified man who told him to deposit £5 million in an offshore bank account, he has claimed in earlier evidence.

Mr Gilmartin (69) told The Irish Times yesterday that he has made a good recovery since undergoing a quadruple bypass heart operation last July. He recuperated in the same nursing home in Cork in which his wife, Vera, who suffers from multiple sclerosis, is a long-stay patient. "I'm great now, and I'll be back in February. Having come this far, I'm going to see it through to the end," he said.

Mr Ahern has denied attending any meeting with the developer in Dáil Éireann in 1989 and says he was at a function in Glasnevin at the time Mr Gilmartin has alleged he met the politician.

Mr Gilmartin says he does not dispute that Mr Ahern may have been in Glasnevin on the day in question. However, he now says new information, culled from the visitors' book in Leinster House, will show that the Taoiseach was at the meeting. He is unimpressed by Mr Ahern's recent description of himself as "one of the few socialists left in Ireland".

"Bertie Ahern is all things to every man; it just depends on who is asking what question. He has an answer for everything."

He is also scathing about former minister Mr Pádraig Flynn, to whom he gave a £50,000 cheque in 1989. Mr Gilmartin was ill last July when Mr Flynn told the tribunal that the developer had changed his story about the payment so that it would not be construed as a bribe. Mr Gilmartin said yesterday that politician was "a clown" and his allegation was "a total lie".

Mr Gilmartin is due to be questioned early next year about this and a few other outstanding matters in the tribunal's Quarryvale 1 module. He will also give evidence in the second part of the Quarryvale module, which will deal with his removal from the West Dublin shopping centre project and a subsequent allegation of bribery involving former lobbyist Mr Frank Dunlop.