The Flood tribunal is to call more than 100 TDs, county councillors and local authority officials past and present to give evidence in public regarding the tribunal's investigation into planning corruption in north Dublin.
The tribunal is investigating information about "a significant number" of alleged payments to politicians and others, in addition to the main allegations relating to Mr Ray Burke, it emerged yesterday.
In addition, "very serious matters" relating to alleged corruption were still under investigation in private, but no decision had been made yet on whether to hear them in public, Mr John Gallagher SC, for the tribunal, said.
Mr Gallagher spent 90 minutes reading a 50-page "public statement", which reviewed the background to the tribunal and sketched, in the most general and tantalising terms, its future direction.
The statement was as remarkable for what was missing as for what it contained. There were, for example, no details, juicy or otherwise, of the tribunal's investigations. No information about the money flowing through the bank accounts of Mr Burke and Mr George Redmond, for example. No mention of the developer Mr Tom Gilmartin, who has made equally serious but separate allegations.
Likewise, there was no mention of an interim statement, which might tie up the present Gogarty strand of the tribunal's investigations; nor were any conclusions drawn from the evidence heard so far. Mr Gallagher's opus was a "public statement" and he effectively dismissed the need for the "opening statement" called for by other parties.
Even after two years, it was not possible to give "any realistic assessment" of how long the tribunal would continue, according to Mr Gallagher. There is no prospect of a final report this year.
Mr Gallagher said the tribunal would call all members of the Oireachtas, past or present, and all members and officials of local authorities who appeared to the tribunal to have been involved directly or indirectly in planning matters relating to the north Dublin lands under investigation.
This would include councillors involved in votes on rezoning, material contraventions, planning applications, tax designations - virtually any planning matter relating to the 726 acres owned by the Murphy Group in north Dublin in 1989.
He repeatedly referred to the lack of co-operation the tribunal had encountered from so many quarters and issued a reminder of the tribunal's instruments of revenge: fines, jail terms and, most realistically, the withholding of legal costs.
In future, the tribunal will operate in discrete modules. Some of these will deal with the prosaic details of the lands, their ownership and planning status. But other modules with deal with the most serious allegations imaginable: the payment of very large sums of money to senior politicians, claims that county councillors and local authority officials were "leaned on" to rezone lands or approve planning applications.
Mr Gallagher expressed regret that the tribunal lawyers had not been able to get the job done within a year; he blamed this on the widening of the terms of reference to include the investigation of all payments to Mr Burke. This happened after it was revealed in 1998 that Mr Burke had received £30,000 from Rennicks Manufacturing.
He offered no fewer than 10 reasons for the delays which have afflicted the tribunal. Elderly, sick or unco-operative witnesses on the one hand, document mountains, constant legal challenges and the passage of time on the other.
The tribunal has been involved in separate sets of litigation, most of it hostile, culminating in the present High Court action by the developer Mr Tom Bailey and his wife, Caroline, which has delayed the completion of the Gogarty module of the tribunal.
Some idea of the magnitude of the tribunal's task can be gained from Mr Gallagher's review of previous investigations into planning corruption. There were Garda investigations in 1974, 1989 and 1993. For the last investigation, gardai interviewed the 78 members of Dublin County Council, but no prosecution resulted.
The investigating superintendent in 1989 put it well: "Bribery and corruption are furtive crimes engaged in by more than one person. All involved benefit . . . Evidence to support criminal charges in this type of crime is almost impossible to obtain."
Mr Gallagher also revealed that gardai have finished their investigations into the leaking of confidential information from the tribunal. This matter is also to be dealt with in public evidence in March when the tribunal is scheduled to resume its hearings.
pcullen@irish-times.ie The full text of the tribunal statement can be read on The Irish Times website at: www. ireland.com/newspaper/special/