The following is an edited version of a statement issued by Owen O’Callaghan yesterday in response to the Tribunal’s findings.
“I want to make it quite clear that I utterly reject the findings of the Mahon tribunal and that I intend to seek their judicial review in the High Court. The tribunal arrived at its conclusions based on procedures which by any reasonable criteria have been biased, unfair and unjust.
“There are so many deficiencies in the way the tribunal went about its work that it is difficult to know where to start. But failing in any way to subject the evidence of its star witness, Tom Gilmartin, to even cursory examination is probably the most striking.
“The tribunal through its quite extraordinary protection and mentoring of Mr Gilmartin has produced what is clearly an inevitable result having regard to all that has been spent on the process. On any reading Mr Gilmartin’s evidence was inconsistent, contradictory and unreliable.
In a judgment of the superior courts of this country his evidence was decried as being unreliable. Yet it appears from the report that his evidence remains the principal foundation for all of the adverse findings against me. It is simply breathtaking that the tribunal appears to have accepted every allegation made by Mr. Gilmartin as the basis for their report
“In the course of litigation taken by me against the tribunal, one of the Supreme Court judges, Mr Justice Hardiman, said that the tribunal had displayed such bias against me, in favour of Mr Gilmartin, that the tribunal should not be permitted to continue the investigation any further and should be stopped by the courts from any further investigation into me or my companies.
“Mr Justice Hardiman’s criticisms of the tribunal are remarkable and trenchant. They reflect his deep unease at the manner in which the tribunal was conducting its business and should give pause for thought to any fair-minded person reading its findings.
“...There was considerable support right across the political spectrum for the then Quarryvale project. Like many other businesses and individuals at that time, I supported the election campaigns of politicians who long before my involvement in the project had declared their strong support for the project.
“I find it incomprehensible that the tribunal should conclude, as it has, that this support amounted to corruption and that this compromised the ‘required disinterested performances by councillors of their duties’.
“The findings of the Mahon tribunal against me, having regard to the evidence given at the tribunal, are simply not sustainable.”