Political Career:Liam Lawlor personified the conflict at the heart of politics for nearly three decades, writes Mark Brennock
It was the early 1960s as Liam Lawlor came to adulthood. A new breed of Irish entrepreneur, many of whom came from modest backgrounds, had started to make big money. At the same time a group of able, educated young politicians known as the men in Mohair suits - Charles Haughey, Brian Lenihan and Donogh O'Malley - were moving into positions of power.
Those pursuing economic and political power met at the heart of Fianna Fáil. And it was in the person of one man - Liam Lawlor - that the two met in the most overt and spectacular fashion through the subsequent three decades.
He personified the conflict at the heart of politics in general, and Fianna Fáil in particular. He said rezoning land for housing was good for Dublin, but it was also good for him. His position on the board of Food Industries conflicted with his chairmanship of an Oireachtas committee.
He was on the Oireachtas committee dealing with ethical matters, when he was at the centre of the most serious allegations that he had breached ethical guidelines himself.
Business met politics in Liam Lawlor and he saw no conflict. In an interview with this reporter in 1989 after the Sugar Company controversy, he argued passionately that the two aspects of his life sat exceedingly well together. The food sector needed to rationalise and expand, and there he was, in politics and on the Board of Food Industries, seeking to bring this about.
Dublin needed housing land, and there he was in the council rezoning land for housing. As he portrayed it, his parallel endeavours in business and politics represented a seamless project in patriotism.
Like Charles Haughey, he was sharp, intelligent and ambitious. Like his one-time party leader, his love of money and his relentless pursuit of it tarnished what could have been an outstanding career in public life.
On leaving Synge Street CBS in the early 1960s, Lawlor bought a van and began servicing refrigeration machinery. This developed over 15 years into a group of companies providing equipment and service to refrigeration and air conditioning users.
He became involved in Fianna Fáil and was first elected to the Dáil at the age of 32 in the 1977 Jack Lynch landslide. He was re-elected in 1981, but lost his seat in 1982, winning it back in 1987. He lost his Dublin County Council seat in 1991.
He was never appointed to government office, but looked the part more than many ministers. He wore classy double breasted suits and drove - or more often was driven in - a Mercedes bigger than that used by any minister or taoiseach.
He only received his first frontbench appointment in 1995. Due to an illness to Síle DeValera, he became spokesman for arts, culture and heritage. His failure to be promoted was down partly to his backing of George Colley for the leadership in 1979.
He was marked out as a prime suspect in land rezoning corruption from early on. In April 1980, Fianna Fáil members of Dublin County Council forced through a motion rezoning 150 acres of agricultural land in Lucan - including 17 acres owned by Lawlor - for housing. Ultimately the decision was reversed after public outcry, but the damage to Mr Lawlor was done: he was forever portrayed as the man who would use his political influence to make himself rich. He always denied he had sought to influence anyone to support that rezoning.
While detail of his activities has only emerged in recent years, it was widely believed within Fianna Fáil and among journalists, politicians and gardaí that Lawlor - and Ray Burke - were receiving significant sums in relation to Dublin planning decisions. Yet while Lawlor never held government office, his party involved him centrally in organisational matters. He served on electoral strategy committees, and had particular expertise in planning by-election campaigns. In the early 1980s he was national strategy organiser.
Tribunal evidence has now led to the widespread acceptance that Lawlor was a central figure in the nexus of corruption and bribery involved in rezoning land in Dublin during that time. He was an influential figure among Dublin county councillors, and received substantial sums from developers seeking to have their land rezoned - a manoeuvre that multiplied the value of unused land and made its owners very rich indeed. He was widely believed to be the "Mr Big" named by Frank Dunlop as behind the controversial Quarryvale rezoning.
In the late 1980s, he was receiving payments from property developer Tom Gilmartin who wanted to develop the Quarryvale site and another at Bachelors' Walk. In the mid-1990s he received at least £40,000 from Dunlop. He was closely associated with former assistant City and County manager George Redmond and builder Jim Kennedy. It is likely that these payments represent only a fraction of the money he made for influencing decisions.
Despite the widespread and persistent rumours, he was appointed to a number of key Oireachtas committee positions over the years, most notably as chairman of the Oireachtas committee on semi-State bodies.
In parallel, his business career moved on. In 1988 he was in Iraq doing business on behalf of the Goodman organisation, passing himself off as a Government representative when he deemed it useful.
In 1989, it emerged that while chairman of the Oireachtas joint committee on commercial semi-State bodies - whose remit included Irish Sugar - he was also a non-executive director of Food Industries - which wanted to buy Irish Sugar. During this time he had access to a confidential report for the committee on the internal affairs of Irish Sugar. Under pressure from Charles Haughey he resigned from the committee.
In 1999, he began to be sucked into what would become the dominant activity in his life until his death: the planning tribunal. Statements from developer Tom Gilmartin and Frank Dunlop provided evidence for what had been suspected for years. Lawlor took legal action after legal action, objecting to tribunal demands to appear before it, to answer questions, to hand over documents, and to reveal bank details. He won important concessions, delineating the tribunal's power. After all of this, it was almost comical to find that when Fianna Fáil TD Denis Foley was to be investigated in relation to a complaint concerning his Ansbacher account, Lawlor was one of the five members of the Dáil committee on members' interests who was to sit in judgment. He passed on the opportunity and resigned from the committee.
His slow descent from favour in Fianna Fáil continued, with Lawlor typically fighting and then withdrawing from another position or role as the net closed in. In June 2000 he resigned from the party Fail after an internal inquiry accused him of being unco-operative in his dealings with it. The Dáil - after much procedural wrangling - then denounced the TD for refusing to co-operate with the tribunal.
As he continued to refuse to co-operate and to stonewall, the Opposition pressed on, demanding that he resign his vice chairmanship of a Dáil committee. Ultimately the Dáil passed a motion calling on him to resign his Dáil seat.
He finally went to jail in January 2001. He went again in January 2002 and yet again the following month. That brought perhaps his moment of greatest drama when he was brought from Mountjoy Jail in a prison van, immaculately dressed, to insist he had been "slightly more than half right" in his behaviour. TDs were impressed by his extraordinary coolness under pressure but voted anyway to call on him to resign his Dáil seat, a call he ignored.
He bowed out of politics in 2002, deciding against contesting the general election as an independent. This weekend, instead of attending the 69th Fianna Fáil Ardfheis in Killarney, he died in a tragic accident, far from home.