Burke has 'no recollection' of alleged meeting with developer

Former minister Mr Ray Burke has told the tribunal that he has "no recollection in the world" of the claimed meeting between property developer Mr Tom Gilmartin and government ministers at Leinster House in February 1989.

"I have no memory of such a meeting at all," said Mr Burke, who was making his first appearance at the tribunal yesterday since November 2001.

Mr Burke, who left politics in 1997, said that if such a meeting had taken place he could see nothing wrong with it, as it was part of government policy to encourage investment in Ireland.

Indeed, a few days before the date of the claimed meeting, he had met leading industrialists about encouraging investment.

Asked about Senator Mary O'Rourke's evidence that a meeting between Mr Gilmartin and cabinet members had taken place, Mr Burke said Mrs O'Rourke and Mr Gilmartin seemed to be talking about two different meetings, taking place at different times and places.

On February 1st, 1989, the most probable date put forward for the alleged meeting, Mr Burke said he had been in his ministerial office in Kildare Street in the afternoon at the time he was alleged to have participated in the meeting at Leinster House.

Ms Patricia Dillon SC, for the tribunal, said that Mr Burke was alleged to have met Mr Gilmartin in a total of four meetings.

Two of the meetings, in September 1988 and February 1989, involved the taoiseach, Mr Charles Haughey, his ministers and local authority officials, and concerned urban renewal.

Mr Burke agreed it was "possible" that he had attended both these meetings, as George Redmond has alleged. As for the fourth alleged meeting, Mr Gilmartin has told the tribunal that Mr Burke did not attend this.

Asked about leaks of confidential material from the tribunal, Mr Burke said there had been numerous leaks from the tribunal in the six or seven years he had been involved with it, but none of these had been favourable to him.

"So I suggest a look closer to home might not be a bad idea," he added.

Ms Dillon said that Mr Burke would have been minister for justice in 1990 when the Garda investigation into alleged planning corruption was completed.

Mr Burke said that the report would have been sent to the secretary of his department and he would have seen a summary of it. He was aware of the allegations made by Mr Gilmartin, but he would not have studied the report in great detail.