Witness 'unstable', tribunal told

The wife of amusement arcade owner, Mr Jim Kennedy, yesterday claimed a former employee who made a series of damaging allegations against her husband was an unstable person who could not be trusted.

Ms Antoinette Kennedy said Mr Jude Campion, a former doorman at Amusement City on Westmoreland Street, Dublin, had told barefaced lies about her husband and suffered from addictions to morphine and alcohol.

She said she had little confidence in Mr Campion as an employee and only kept him on until assault allegations made against him by two teenagers were disposed of by the courts.

"I realised then that he had a rather unstable personality and had a problem with alcohol and an addiction to morphine," she said. The assault allegations were dismissed when the teenagers failed to give evidence at the District Court. "When I relieved him of his job he became extremely aggressive. He said he had a gun and would go after Bill Shipsey, and then go after me," she said.

"I remember feeling great relief when he was gone and annoyed that I had allowed such a nutter to work on the premises."

Mr Campion told the tribunal last month that Mr Kennedy had held a series of meetings at the premises between 1989 and 1990 with former Dublin TD, Mr Liam Lawlor, former assistant Dublin city and county manager Mr George Redmond and solicitor Mr John Caldwell.

Ms Kennedy, however, said these meetings never took place and that her husband was out of the country for long spells during the period in question.

She said that since she took over full-time management of the arcade in 1989, Mr Redmond had never set foot on the premises.

Her husband had had a falling out with him a few years earlier and they had ended contact with each other, she said.

Ms Kennedy accepted that Mr Lawlor and her husband, who had a shared interest in housing development, had met around four to five times between 1986 and 1989, but never in the gaming arcade.

"He [ Mr Lawlor] had a keen interest in local development. We had five different show houses for a development at the time [ in Lucan, Co Dublin] and my husband was very proud of them, and showed them to Mr Lawlor. My husband claimed he had designed the best semi in Ireland."

She added that Mr Caldwell may have visited the arcade on occasion to meet with her husband, but only to discuss protracted legal issues relating to ownership of the premises.

Counsel for the tribunal, Mr Des O'Neill SC, however, said key aspects of Ms Kennedy's claims that sought to undermine Mr Campion's evidence were untrue and inaccurate.

Mr Campion testified that Mr Redmond and Mr Lawlor used to arrive at a back door of the premises, and that he would direct them upstairs for meetings.

One of these meetings, he said, involved a £1.2 million compensation claim against Dublin County Council. He also described an apartment in the basement of the premises where, he said, Ms Kennedy stayed with her children. Ms Kennedy said yesterday there was no such office upstairs and at no stage was there an apartment in the basement.

Mr O'Neill, however, showed a report from a property surveyor in 1990, including some photographs, which he said made it clear that there was an office and a dwelling area on the premises.

Judge Gerald Keys said the only reason Ms Kennedy was reluctant to admit this was because it would support Mr Campion's evidence.

Mr O'Neill asked Ms Kennedy why she had apparently signed and applied each year for an auctioneer's licence for her husband when he was living out of the country for several years.

He said it was a "complete fiction" that her husband carried out business as an auctioneer during this time, and she had aided him. Ms Kennedy said she also had an auctioneer's licence which she applied for each year, even though she was not practising and was living in the Isle of Man.