Brennan 'satisfied' he was not present at meeting

The Minister for Transport, Mr Brennan, has flatly denied that he attended the claimed meeting between Mr Tom Gilmartin and government ministers in Leinster House in 1989.

"I'm satisfied I wasn't there. I had no reason to be there, as a junior minister at the time. I wasn't in the cabinet," Mr Brennan told the tribunal yesterday.

Mr Brennan said Mr Gilmartin was in error in placing him among seven government ministers who allegedly attended the meeting, after which the developer says he was subjected to a £5 million extortion demand.

Ms Mary O'Rourke, the only former minister who does recall the meeting described by Mr Gilmartin, has told the tribunal Mr Brennan was not in attendance.

Yesterday Mr Brennan said that, if he had been at the meeting, he certainly would have remembered it.

In February 1989 he was in his first appointment as a junior minister for trade. He had no responsibility for urban renewal.

He was not a member of the government.

On the afternoon of February 1st, 1989, the most likely date for the claimed meeting, he was in his office in Kildare Street, across the road from Leinster House.

He agreed with Mr Donal O'Donnell SC, for Mr Gilmartin, that there was nothing unusual in the type of meeting described by Mr Gilmartin and Ms O'Rourke.

Mr O'Donnell recalled that a journalist, Ms Freda Kelly, had given evidence that Mr Gilmartin told her in 1989 that Mr Brennan was at the meeting. Counsel asked whether Ms Kelly was being malicious in her evidence.

Mr Brennan said he had no wish to comment on the motives of anyone.

Mr O'Donnell pointed out that Mr Brennan's lawyers had referred to his client's motives as "arguably malicious".

He asked if the witness wanted to dissociate himself from this remark.

Mr Brennan said Mr Gilmartin had accused him of telling lies on the previous day. He hadn't wanted to engage a legal team but had had to do so after seeing himself being called a liar on the 9 o'clock news.

Mr Brennan said he did meet Mr Gilmartin and his business partners, Arlington Securities, along with other ministers, officials and representatives of CIÉ in September 1989.

This concerned Arlington's plans to build a shopping centre on Bachelor's Walk, with a bus station on top. Mr Gilmartin could be mixing up two meetings.

Asked whether he had met Mr Gilmartin before this, he said he didn't think so.