MAHON TRIBUNAL:CORK DEVELOPER Owen O'Callaghan has told the Mahon tribunal he was not concerned when he heard about a Garda investigation into planning corruption in Dublin County Council in 1993 because the payments he made to councillors were political contributions.
He also denied that senior AIB bank official Michael O'Farrell raised concerns at a meeting with him about articles on planning corruption that appeared in The Irish Times in the same year.
The planning tribunal is questioning Mr O'Callaghan as part of the Quarryvale II module, an inquiry into allegations of corruption over the rezoning of land on which the Liffey Valley Shopping Centre is built.
Counsel for the tribunal Patricia Dillon said a bank memo written in July 1993 mentioned a series of articles written in The Irish Timesby Frank McDonald. The articles raised concerns about rezoning decisions by councillors as part of the Dublin County Council development plan and mentioned the Quarryvale development. The articles also said then-minister for the environment Michael Smith had asked gardaí to investigate the matter.
Ms Dillon asked Mr O'Callaghan if he was concerned when he heard about the Garda investigation, given that he had already made payments to some councillors. "No, because . . . these were all political contributions as far as I was concerned," Mr O'Callaghan said. "They were not recorded as political donations in the books and records," Ms Dillon said. Mr O'Callaghan responded that they should have been.
Mr O'Callaghan said he was aware of the newspaper articles but probably had not read them himself since "like most Cork people" he followed the Examiner.
