Tánaiste Mary Harney has said she was concerned about rumours of payments to councillors from the late 1980s. Paul Cullen reports.
"There were suspicions, to be honest. There appeared to be some people who had a lifestyle that might not have been compatible with their obvious income," she told the tribunal yesterday.
Ms Harney recalled discussing her concerns at the time with fellow councillors Tom Kitt and Chris Flood. She said she was concerned about a pattern in which councillors from different areas would sign motions at the behest of colleagues who wanted to remain "on side" with local residents.
In the 1990s, she pointed out, governments in which she was a minister of state brought in changes in the way section 4 rezoning motions could be passed, as well as making it harder to obtain compensation when rezoning was refused.
Ms Harney defended a €1,270 political donation from Christopher Jones, a landowner in her constituency, in 2002.
The tribunal is currently investigating allegations of corruption surrounding the rezoning of Mr Jones's land at Ballycullen in south Dublin.
She said that although this payment was probably sent to her as Progressive Democrats party leader, "as donations would be", it had been lodged to the party election campaign account.
The Tánaiste agreed that she met Mr Jones and the financial controller of his company, Derry Hussey, in 1991 and 1992 when the two men were seeking to have the Ballycullen lands rezoned. She said that she knew Mr Hussey and his wife Gemma, a former Fine Gael minister for education, socially and she had a high regard for them.
Ms Harney was a member of Dublin County Council until June 1991. Councillors voted to rezone Ballycullen for housing in October 1992. She had no recollection of the content of the meetings and no diaries or other records detailing what was discussed.
However, in any such meeting she would have had frank discussions about a proposal and would have referred people to the local councillors. She would not have spoken to PD councillors about the representations made by Mr Jones and Mr Hussey.
In the 1991 local elections, the party elected seven councillors. She had encouraged them to "do their own thing" and not to apply a whip system on planning matters.
"I certainly would never have lobbied them or asked them to vote for a particular rezoning."
Ms Harney said she had no professional contact with Frank Dunlop on planning or other matters and did not have much of a relationship with Liam Lawlor since the mid-1980s.
"I don't think I would have been the person he would have been seeking to win support from in a direct sense."
Mr Jones had argued that his farm at Ballycullen was no longer viable because of the proximity of new housing. Ms Harney said she would have empathised with that view.
In her part of Dublin, many farmers were concerned about the city encircling their farms. Her father had farmed and her brother was still farming at the edge of an urban area.
Later, Cllr Tony Fox "categorically" denied Mr Dunlop's claim that he paid the politician £1,000 in 1992 in return for his support for the Ballycullen rezoning.
Patricia Dillon SC, for the tribunal, said there had been lodgments totalling £6,228 to the accounts of Mr Fox over a four-month period from October 1992. In that year, Mr Fox's net salary amounted to £6,332, she pointed out.
Mr Fox said that none of these lodgments included any money from Mr Dunlop. They included expenses from the council and for attendance at conferences and site visits. He had also accumulated savings and several of his children gave their parents money.
The money was legitimately and honestly obtained, he said. There may have been some political donations, but not from Mr Dunlop.
Records of expenses paid to members of Dublin County Council at this time are no longer available.