The former minister for defence, Seán Barrett, has told the Mahon tribunal he was offered an £80,000 consultancy contract to assist in a land-swap arrangement involving golf clubs in south Dublin and property owned by a development company at Cherrywood in the Carrickmines Valley.
Mr Barrett, who was a Fine Gael member of Dublin County Council in the early 1990s, said a man he had never met before had called to his clinic and offered the consultancy for his assistance in swapping lands owned by Monarch Properties for either Killiney or Dún Laoghaire golf clubs.
Mr Barrett also said that he had been the subject of false allegations for a decade that he had received a large sum of money from a developer. These allegations were totally untrue but it had taken 10 years to get the opportunity to stand up at the tribunal and say this publicly.
Mr Barrett said the man who had called to his clinic proposed an outline fee, including secretarial and other expenses, of £80,000. He had given the man short shrift. Mr Barrett mentioned the incident to someone and subsequently he read in newspapers of suspicions he had received a large sum of money.
He said an individual, whom he did not name, had made "totally untrue" allegations about him in private session to the tribunal. There were also suggestions that he was getting Fine Gael colleagues to vote for proposals which he was opposing in public. "I reject these [ allegations] out of hand," he said.
Mr Barrett said that it had also been suggested that he had received a pay-off, disguised as an insurance premium paid to his company for horses belonging to developer Phil Monaghan of Monarch Property. He said that at no stage had this happened.
Mr Barrett said he received an unsolicited cheque for £600 from Monarch in 1991, which he passed on to the party. He had no recollection of a £500 donation the company says it provided in 1992. Monarch had given £1,000 to Fine Gael in Dún Laoghaire in 1995.
Meanwhile the tribunal also heard that Fianna Fáil politicians wanted planners to "back off" on making public statements about rezonings in Dublin. Consultant planner Fergal McCabe said the Irish Planning Institute had commented on some rezonings but it had later received a call from the late Fianna Fáil TD Liam Lawlor indicating he was unhappy.
Mr McCabe said the institute had met Mr Lawlor, Cllr Colm McGrath and possibly Fianna Fáil deputy GV Wright.
He said the intention of the politicians was to get the institute to back off and say friendly things about the development plan. He said it was evident from the start they were not going to do that.
