Senator David Norris holds a 60 per cent share of a Temple Bar property conservatively valued at £500,000, the Circuit Civil Court was told yesterday.
Judge Liam Devally heard Senator Norris was the major shareholder of Hirschfeld Enterprises Ltd which, in 1982, had bought the property in Fownes Street, Dublin, later to become the headquarters of the gay community, and now a sealed-off and fire-damaged dangerous building.
Mr Martin Hayden, counsel for Hirschfeld Enterprises, told the court it was being asked to settle a dispute between the National Gay and Lesbian Federation and the company as to ownership of the building, which had originally cost only £69,500.
Mr Hayden said Senator Norris had effectively founded the Gay Federation and he and a number of other members of the gay community had purchased the building as a centre for gays. They had personally guaranteed bank loans to fund the purchase.
The Hirschfeld Centre had become the hub of gay and lesbian activities in Dublin in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
In the early 1990s the centre was damaged by a fire.
Mr Hayden said the shareholders of Hirschfeld Enterprises had attempted to sell the building but an interested builder had withdrawn when he learned there were legal proceedings in being. Mr Frank Callanan SC, counsel for the federation and a number of individual defendants, said the issue for the court to decide was who was entitled to the proceeds of sale.
He said he would be calling witnesses who would claim that Hirschfeld Enterprises was a legal device to enable the purchase of the property and hold it in the general interest of the gay community and in trust for the NGF.
They would claim that as a charitable trust it was never designed that the shareholders should obtain personal financial gain from it.
The action is expected to last for several days.