Gilmartin tells of 'frantic' calls from Flynn

Developer Tom Gilmartin received a series of "frantic" phone calls from former Fianna Fáil minister Pádraig Flynn in 1998, when news broke that the tribunal was investigating a £50,000 payment to a former minister, the Mahon tribunal heard yesterday.

Mr Gilmartin told tribunal counsel Pat Quinn SC that he initially did not intend to co-operate with the tribunal; he was sceptical of it and did not think it would be "anything other than a whitewash". "It would be like going to law with the devil and the court in hell," he said.

Mr Quinn took Mr Gilmartin through notes written by Mr Flynn based on seven phone calls made to Mr Gilmartin between September 20th and October 3rd, 1998, when Mr Flynn was a European commissioner. He made the calls from Brussels, with the first one being made on the day the story of the £50,000 payment broke in the press.

In earlier evidence, Mr Gilmartin had explained he wrote a cheque for £50,000 as a donation to the Fianna Fáil party in 1989, but had left the payee section blank, and had given it to Mr Flynn.

Mr Gilmartin told the tribunal yesterday that some of the phone call notes were "fabrication" with "an element of truth" and he never agreed to tell the tribunal his donation was to Mr Flynn and not to the Fianna Fáil party. Mr Flynn had used "poetic licence", he said.

The first call lasted two hours and, Mr Gilmartin said, Mr Flynn pressured him to say the cheque had been returned or had been made out to Mr Flynn for his election fees. "I said if I'm giving evidence, I'll perjure myself for nobody," Mr Gilmartin said.

He said he told Mr Flynn he could tell the tribunal what he liked, since he, Mr Gilmartin, would not be co-operating with it. He said Mr Flynn also asked to meet him in Luton, but he told him tribunal staff were in Luton and he would "have to be stupid to turn up".

"He wanted to come and enlighten me on what I should say and shouldn't say," Mr Gilmartin said. "I refused."

He also said Mr Flynn told him that there was someone trying to "shovel muck" on "the country and western brigade", meaning Mr Flynn and Ray MacSharry. Mr Flynn suggested it was Bertie Ahern and Fianna Fáil fundraiser Paul Kavanagh who were doing the shovelling, Mr Gilmartin said.

He became emotional when he recounted how he was visited in his home in Luton by three men and was asked for money. Afterwards, he said, his wife "was terrorised every time a knock came to the door".

He also told the tribunal of a threatening phone call he received when the tribunal began its investigations, advising him to "remember Veronica Guerin" if he came to Dublin.

The tribunal also heard of "unusual transactions" carried out by publican Pat Murphy who cashed cheques for Liam Lawlor in 1993.

Mr Murphy took the stand and told Patricia Dillon SC, for the tribunal, that Mr Lawlor would come in the side door of Cleary's pub in Inchicore, Dublin, to avoid men in the bar who might "give him a slagging", and would give Mr Murphy various third-party cheques to cash.

Judge Alan Mahon described the transactions as "unusual". Mr Murphy said he took it that if Mr Lawlor had given the cheques to his own bank, the bank would "swallow it up on him".