MAHON TRIBUNAL:FORMER FIANNA Fáil TD Marian McGennis apologised to the tribunal yesterday for not disclosing meetings she had with Owen O'Callaghan, Frank Dunlop, Ambrose Kelly and Liam Lawlor, when initially queried in correspondence as to whether she had met them.
Entries in Mr Dunlop's diary which recorded a number of meetings with Ms McGennis in his office during the period when he was lobbying for Mr O'Callaghan on the Quarryvale project, were shown at the tribunal.
The entries included lunch meetings with Mr O'Callaghan and Mr Dunlop and meetings in Mr Dunlop's office in the company of other councillors.
"I accept any references in Frank Dunlop's diary as probably being accurate but I have no recollection" of the meetings, she said. Records from Mr Dunlop's office also showed numerous telephone contacts.
Ms McGennis, a former TD, senator and councillor, said she had not tried to hide anything from the tribunal. "I apologise, chairman, I was wrong . . . It wasn't deliberate, chairman, I can assure you . . . Why would I want to hide that?"
Ms McGennis said she made a distinction between meetings arranged by her and meetings that occurred at Mr Dunlop's instigation.
She said she did not consider meetings in Mr Dunlop's office instigated by him, to be "formal" meetings. "I probably should have said I met Frank Dunlop on a number of occasions and that would have covered it."
The tribunal heard that in 1991 she was given £1,400 by Mr Dunlop and that in the 1992 general election campaign he paid for political advertising for her, including 3,500 leaflets, at a cost of £6,605. Mr Dunlop was in turn reimbursed by Mr O'Callaghan.
Ms McGennis said she had believed the funding for the advertisements had come from Fianna Fáil until she was otherwise informed recently by the tribunal.
She said Mr Dunlop had supplied her with a mobile phone for the period 1992 to 1995 and had paid the bills. While she had supported the Quarryvale project in May 1991, she voted against Quarryvale in December 1992 because by then to do otherwise would have been "political suicide".
The tribunal heard that Ms McGennis did not tell an internal Fianna Fáil inquiry into political donations in 2000 about the largest financial contribution of her political career. Asked why she had not told the inquiry about the £5,000 she received from John Corcoran of Green Properties in May 1991, Ms McGennis said it "didn't arise" in the context of her interview with the inquiry.
At the time Green Properties was promoting a development at Blanchardstown.
She told the tribunal chairman, Judge Alan Mahon, that she had told the tribunal of the Green Property payment at the time of her "very first" contact with the tribunal.
Ms McGennis told Patricia Dillon SC, for the tribunal, that her vote had never been bought and she had never been offered an inducement for her vote.
She said Mr Dunlop had told the tribunal that she had never sought a "bribe". She said she strongly objected to questioning from Ms Dillon concerning her appointment to the Seanad as a taoiseach's nominee in 1993 and whether she had lobbied Mr Dunlop.
She objected to the suggestion that there was something improper about the appointment.
Judge Mahon said he did not agree with her that the questioning should have been stopped.
