Lawlor bows out of Foley hearings but will stay on committee

The embattled Fianna Fail TD, Mr Liam Lawlor, intends to remain a member of the Dail Committee on Members Interests while not…

The embattled Fianna Fail TD, Mr Liam Lawlor, intends to remain a member of the Dail Committee on Members Interests while not participating in its forthcoming investigation of Mr Denis Foley.

Mr Lawlor, who faces calls on him to resign from the Dail's ethics body, went on the offensive yesterday, accusing the Fine Gael and Labour leaders of hypocrisy in the controversy over rezoning and political lobbying.

He claimed the family of Fine Gael leader Mr John Bruton had benefited from the controversial Quarryvale rezoning and suggested Mr Bruton had received funding from political lobbyist Mr Frank Dunlop. A spokesman for Mr Bruton said the allegations were part of "the Fianna Fail pattern of coming out with slanderous allegations when they are in trouble. It does them no credit to indulge in such black propaganda".

He said a second cousin of Mr Bruton's had owned some of the Quarryvale land. "John Bruton had no interest in it, no knowledge of it, no discussion on it with anyone and made no representations in relation to it. He made a public statement on all of this the last time Fianna Fail put it around as one of their slanderous allegations."

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He said Mr Bruton could recall Mr Dunlop attending two £100-a-plate dinners "in Meath where Mr Dunlop lives and Mr Bruton is a deputy. He supported numerous Fine Gael fundraisers".

Mr Lawlor also said that Labour leader Mr Ruairi Quinn had lobbied him (Mr Lawlor) when he was a director of the Goodman company Food Industries seeking work for his architecture firm. In addition, he said, Labour deputy Ms Roisin Shortall had arranged a meeting between builder Mr Michael Bailey and Mr Quinn as Minister for Finance, at which Mr Bailey successfully sought special tax designation for lands he owned at Poppintree in Dublin. Mr Lawlor said he presumed this was not a facility the Minister for Finance offered to everyone seeking tax designation, but had been organised as a result of lobbying by a Labour Party deputy.

A Labour spokesman said the matters in relation to Mr Quinn were well known and had been aired at the Flood tribunal and elsewhere. A party source said of the Shortall meeting there was no equivalence between the legitimate constituency activity of a public representative and the sleaze allegations that emerged this week. ail reaction to landing in the dirt: start throwing as much of it about as possible. "This is the last fling of a desperate man," a source said.

Mr Lawlor said yesterday he told the chairman of the five-member Dail Committee on Members' Interests, Mr Tony Killeen TD (Fianna Fail), on Thursday that he would not participate in any of the hearings in relation to Mr Foley. "I told him availability will be a problem," Mr Lawlor told The Irish Times yesterday. "I'm on a couple of other committees and the Foley investigation will be too time-consuming. It will be like doing jury service." He said that while his intention was simply to absent himself from the Foley hearings, if "protocol" dictated otherwise he would reconsider the position.

The Committee on Members Interests will begin hearings next month into an allegation that Mr Denis Foley TD breached the Act. The Act requires Oireachtas members to make a declaration when voting or speaking on a matter in the Dail in which they have a material interest.

In September 1997, Mr Foley voted on a Dail motion on the Moriarty tribunal while at the same time being an Ansbacher account-holder. The Labour Party deputy leader, Mr Brendan Howlin, said yesterday that Mr Lawlor should be replaced on the Committee, rather than simply step aside for the duration of the Foley investigation. He acknowledged that it was legally possible for the committee to deal with the Foley issue without Mr Lawlor but said the issue was too important to be heard by a committee reduced to four members.

The Fine Gael leader, Mr John Bruton, reported a claim by one of his councillors that he was offered a £30,000 bribe to the Flood tribunal in late 1997, his spokesman has said.

Councillor Tom Morrissey, now a Progressive Democrat councillor, told Mr Bruton's special adviser, Mr Roy Dooney, of the bribe offer in late 1996 or early 1997, and Mr Dooney told Mr Bruton, according to a report in yesterday's Irish Examiner.

Mr Bruton yesterday rejected suggestions that he had not dealt with the matter promptly.