Niall Collins: The events that led to the sale of a site by Limerick County Council to his wife

On December 15th, 2006, a Limerick solicitor wrote to Limerick County Council on behalf of a client. The client wanted to know whether the council would consider the disposal of property it owned on the main street of Patrickswell.

The letter was the first of a tranche of documents released to investigative website, The Ditch, on foot of a Freedom of Information request earlier this year.

The name of the interested party was redacted, but the letter from the solicitor made clear the client was “operating in the area and wishes to provide a centre within the environs of Patrickswell Village to provide this service to the local community”.

The person who sent the letter was Eimear O’Connor. She was a general practitioner who wanted to open a medical centre in the Patrickswell area. She was also the wife of Niall Collins, then a county councillor in Limerick. The solicitor wanted to know the procedure that had to be followed if the council was interested in selling the land.

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A month later, there was a meeting of councillors who represented the Bruff Local Electoral Area in Co Limerick. One of the items to be considered was the disposal of that same parcel of land in Patrickswell.

A senior engineer told the meeting that “a number of inquiries” were received to purchase the site. It was owned by the council and fronted on to the main street, but was also “part of the open space of Marian Park”.

“There are existing developments on both sides of the site and it has very limited use as an open space,” the engineer informed the meeting.

[ Niall Collins should have absented himself from council meeting over land sale, Taoiseach says ]

[ Niall Collins statement on Limerick property unlikely to silence questions ]

If it were put on sale it would be by the open market, he added.

The minutes of the meeting noted: “The members were in favour of the proposal and it was proposed ... to proceed as outlined.”

Niall Collins was one of the councillors present at the meeting. He, along with the other six councillors at the meeting, was in favour of the proposal. This is the nub of the issue as far as his role is concerned.

In the statement he released on Monday night, he referred to the sale of the site happening in a transparent and open manner on the open market. Indeed it was, and there is evidence that the agreed price was some €38,000 in excess of the initial offer.

He also pointed out that the actual sale occurred in September 2008, over a year after he ceased being a councillor, having been elected to the Dáil in the summer of 2007.

However, he was a councillor at the time the decision to sell the land was made at that critical meeting of the Bruff LEA in January 2007. Moreover, he attended the meeting at which the decision was made. All the councillors present were “in favour of the proposal”. So it seems Mr Collins assented to the sale.

There is no record in the minutes of that meeting to Mr Collins making any reference to the letter written to the council on behalf of his wife a month previously.

The relevant law is the Local Government Act 2003. Section 177 states that a member who has a pecuniary or other beneficial interest should disclose the nature of his or her interest, or the fact of a connected person’s interest, at the meeting before it is discussed. The person must withdraw from the meeting for so long as the matter is being discussed or considered and, accordingly, he or she shall take no part in the discussion or consideration of the matter and shall refrain from voting in relation to it.

The question is, did Niall Collins have a pecuniary or beneficial interest in the disposal of the site on the basis that his wife had expressed an interest in purchasing it should it be offered for sale by the council?

The third and last paragraph of Mr Collins’s short statement refers to this meeting.

“When the council executive recommended to the Bruff LEA committee that the property should be put up for sale in January 2007, neither I nor my wife had any pecuniary or beneficial interest in that property. There was no disagreement with the executive’s recommendation.”

The question around which this controversy revolves is how Section 177 of the Act is interpreted. Mr Collins is clearly of the view that neither he nor a connected person [his wife] had an interest in the site, and that an inquiry to the council expressing an interest in the site did not constitute an interest. It is clear that Opposition figures hold a different view.

The senior engineer referred to a number of inquiries. However, the only one released by the local authority on foot of Freedom of Information requests was the letter sent on behalf of Eimear O’Connor. As of now, no others have been published and it is unknown how many requests were received.

The process moved slowly after that. The lands were advertised for sale in the Limerick Leader on two occasions by the end of March 2007.

The auctioneer appointed to handle the sale wrote to the council on March 22nd to say there had been “good interest to date” in the property.

“This morning I received an offer of €110,000 for the land,” wrote the auctioneer.

The offer was made by Eimear O’Connor, who planned to develop a medical centre there, stated the letter.

“There are other clients that I have given details to and I will await hearing from them before the council makes a decision,” concluded the letter.

It was clear that the council either received further offers or considered the sum offered low. There’s a note written on the margins of the letter from early May stating “€125,000 latest offer. 01/05/07″. Then another handwritten note simply stating “€154,000″.

It is not known whether offers were received from other parties, or whether the council asked for a higher purchase price from the successful buyer.

By September 2007 it is clear that Dr O’Connor had gone “sale agreed” on the property, as the council sent a formal letter confirming it had no objection to her applying for planning permission on the land.

It took until the following August for the council to finally agree to dispose of the land. The senior engineer recommended that the site be sold to Dr O’Connor for a price of €148,000. Planning permission had been granted in June that year for the construction of a two-storey building comprising a ground floor medical centre and first floor offices.

A full meeting of the council gave its approval for the sale on September 22nd, 2008.

However, the medical centre was not built on the site. After a long hiatus, Dr O’Connor received permission in 2020 to build a terrace of five two-storey two-bed units instead.

[ Collins statement on property bought by his wife has not addressed all the questions ]

Through her solicitors she wrote to Limerick County Council with a proposal for developing and completing the five units, and then selling them to the council for social housing as a “turnkey” proposal.

Speaking in the Dáil on Tuesday, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said Mr Collins had written to the Ceann Comhairle’s office seeking time to make a statement.

Mr Varadkar said he did not believe question-and-answer sessions in the chamber were “fair” and that the Dáil was “a parliament, not a kangaroo court”.

The Taoiseach was responding to People Before Profit TD Paul Murphy, who said there needed to be an opportunity for TDs to engage in questions and answers with Mr Collins regarding the “very serious allegations” on the Ditch website.

Mr Murphy said a statement from the Fianna Fáil TD on Monday “did not dispute a single one of the allegations” set out by the website.

“He didn’t dispute the fact that his wife contacted Limerick County Council when he was a councillor seeking to buy a parcel of land,” Mr Murphy said.

“He did not dispute that he then participated in the decision to put that land up for sale. He did not dispute the fact that he didn’t recuse himself. He didn’t declare his conflict of interest. He didn’t not vote in this decision.

“On the face of it, it is a very, very clear breach of the code of conduct for councillors. It is quite likely a criminal offence under the Local Government Act, and we therefore need to have not just a statement, which I understand he’s agreed to do, that’s welcome ... We need the opportunity for TDs to have questions and answers with Niall Collins.”