Quarryvale meetings at AIB marked by 'very rough language', banker says

QUARRYVALE MEETINGS at Allied Irish Bank included "heated discussion", "very irrational comments" and "very rough language", a senior banker told the inquiry yesterday.

Michael O'Farrell, former senior manager of the corporate section in AIB Ballsbridge, said Luton-based developer Tom Gilmartin, did not always attend the meetings of Barkhill Ltd, the company behind the Quarryvale development, held at AIB bank centre in Ballsbridge. But when he did, they could be very heated.

Mr Gilmartin held a 40 per cent stake in the company, Cork developer Owen O'Callaghan also held 40 per cent and AIB had a 20 per cent stake. However, he had told the bank he could not afford to travel to the meetings. Counsel for the tribunal, Pat Quinn SC, asked Mr O'Farrell if he recalled Mr Gilmartin querying payments to Shefran Ltd, a company owned by Frank Dunlop.

Mr O'Farrell said he did not remember. He said he could not recall details of any of the Barkhill meetings and was relying on contemporaneous file notes supplied to the tribunal by the bank.

He did not remember Mr Gilmartin calling the bank and Mr O'Callaghan a "shower of gangsters". But he knew Mr Gilmartin had often complained that the project was his and he had been "coerced" out of it.

"In some of those meetings there was some very heated discussion . . . and some very rough language," Mr O'Farrell said.

He said AIB arranged for travel expenses so that Mr Gilmartin could attend meetings of Barkhill "as an act of kindness".

"We were keen that he worked with us rather than any possibility he would work against us," he said.

Mr Quinn highlighted an article in The Irish Times in July 1993, which said then minister for the environment Noel Smith was concerned about planning in Dublin and indicated he wanted some rezoning decisions reversed. He said Mr O'Farrell had made a file note about it and had written: "Does any of the foregoing have implications for Barkhill?"

Mr O'Farrell replied the note was probably just an aide memoir.

Mr Quinn said the bank would have known by this time how much money had been paid to Mr Dunlop. Mr O'Farrell agreed that the information was there, but said it was easier in hindsight to join the sums together.

He said if he had raised the issue with Mr O'Callaghan and there had been any suggestion that cash was changing hands, he would have been concerned.

The tribunal heard that in August 1995 an advert was placed in newspapers by a solicitor's company in Newry offering a reward for people with information in relation to planning corruption. Mr Quinn read into the record part of a file note made by Mr O'Farrell at the time in which he said he raised the advert with Mr O'Callaghan.

The note said: "He indicated that this has absolutely nothing got to do with him or with Quarryvale". Mr Quinn asked Mr O'Farrell why he raised that issue with Mr O'Callaghan. "I have no recollection," Mr O'Farrell said.