A TOP Dublin solicitor has said he resigned from an inquiry at the Dublin Docklands Development Authority (DDDA) because a key witness had been “told how to interact with me”.
Declan Moylan, chairman of Mason Hayes + Curran solicitors, said this was one of three reasons why he did not continue with work he was asked to do by the incoming chairman of the authority, Prof Niamh Brennan, in March of last year.
Prof Brennan has told The Irish Timesthat she was the person Mr Moylan was referring to as having spoken to the witness. She said she spoke to a member of the authority's executive staff "as I wanted to be fair to him".
Mr Moylan had been commissioned by the authority’s board in October 2008 to draft a report on matters concerning the proposed new headquarters of Anglo Irish Bank in the North Lotts area of the docklands. The planning approval for that building was rescinded by the High Court when it heard that its developer, Liam Carroll, had a secret understanding with the authority’s executive that he believed would allow him in time to double its size.
Mr Moylan was given terms of reference for his report and discussed them with the then chairman of the authority, Donal O’Connor. He said he was asked to produce a “lessons learned” report and not to apportion blame, and that he made this clear to people before he interviewed them.
He produced a draft report in December 2008, but in January 2009 Mr O’Connor resigned, having been appointed chairman of Anglo Irish Bank by the Minister for Finance, Brian Lenihan.
Prof Brennan, when she became chairman in March, asked Mr Moylan to expand on his work. “Prof Brennan wanted me to identify who was to blame,” he said, but he had told his interviewees that his exercise “was not a witchhunt”. He felt he could not alter the nature of the inquiry.
He said he also learned that a “key witness” had been spoken to “and I felt undermined by that”. Prof Brennan said it was she who had spoken to the member of staff.
Extracts of Mr Moylan’s report were given to people affected by those extracts, but she felt that sometimes extracts read outside the context of a full report could fail to reveal the impact of what was being said. “I was concerned at that,” Prof Brennan said. Asked whether she had informed Mr Moylan of what she had done, she said: “I expressed my concerns to Mr Moylan.”
Mr Moylan also said he had a difficulty with not being given papers that were being generated as part of a “parallel process” that was under way in the authority.
Prof Brennan said she thought this was a reference to a document she had circulated to the board. She said that in May 2009 she had taken a day’s holiday leave from her work at University College, Dublin and read through the transcripts of the four-day High Court hearing concerning the North Lotts building.
“I was surprised at the insights I gained which I had not obtained from Mr Moylan’s report.” She prepared some extracts which she circulated to the board.
Mr Moylan sought the document, but she told him it contained extracts from the transcripts which he already had.
Mr Moylan said he thought it was “unreasonable” that he was not given documents, and he said his relationship with the authority “disintegrated”.
The Moylan report has never been formally accepted by the authority.
In a statement released earlier this month, the authority said the new board believes the “conflicts of interest” between the developers of the building, Anglo Irish Bank, and certain individuals on the former board of the authority “are striking”. The secret agreement concerning the doubling in size of the building “deserves the most careful scrutiny and examination”.
Mr Moylan prepared a note earlier this year to put his draft report in context. In it he said he was “engaged by the then chairman of the DDDA” to produce his report. This is a reference to Mr O’Connor.
