Frank McNally listened to accounts of some deft footwork in council chamber and gaming arcade alike
Pantomime season got off to an early start at the Flood tribunal yesterday with the return to the stage of popular favourite Frank Dunlop, in the role of Cinderella.
In a performance that put the "dame" back in Dame Street, Mr Dunlop explained how, as a lobbyist for developers in the early 1990s, he looked on Dublin County Council as a dancing enthusiast looks at a "ball".
The first step if you wanted to "get to the ball," he explained, was a rezoning motion signed by members of the council. He added: "Unless you had a motion, you didn't get to dance."
By his own account, Mr Dunlop had a lot of balls during the early 1990s, and did more dancing than Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers combined.
Few people were as quick on their feet as he was in his prime. So when he praises the dancing abilities of others he knew, you have to be impressed. One alleged twinkletoes was the businessman Jim Kennedy. Mr Dunlop recalls meeting him for the first time at the famous Carrickmines ball of 1991, and being impressed that, when it came to rezoning, Mr Kennedy knew all the steps.
Especially the Tom-Hand Reel, Mr Dunlop implied, alluding to the late Fine Gael councillor whom Kennedy said he had "dealt with" before.
The Dunlop-Kennedy meeting allegedly took place in the latter's office in a gaming arcade in Dublin; and after a subsequent meeting, Mr Dunlop says, he left with £25,000 of Mr Kennedy's cash, and a promise of £100,000 if their rezoning motion danced the Last Waltz at the council.
As the pantomime unfolded yesterday, former TD Liam Lawlor emerged as the Good Fairy.
"Oh, no, he isn't," shouted tribunal regulars. "Oh, yes, he is," said Jim Kennedy, as paraphrased by Frank Dunlop, who said that Kennedy referred repeatedly in their conversations to "Liam". Liam "had been very helpful" in the past, was the message, and "would be very helpful" again.
Mr Dunlop's evidence continues next week, with panto regulars expecting a twist in the plot, in which Dublin councillors desperately try to avoid any attempts to fit the glass slipper on them and deny they ever danced with anybody, at any ball, anywhere.
With Mr Kennedy in self-imposed exile from Ireland and the tribunal, it was left to his wife to take the stand yesterday.
Annoyed at what she believes is a media siege of the gaming arcade, Antoinette Kennedy lashed out on arrival in Dublin Castle at chief siege-layer, RTE's Charlie Bird. "Charlie, you're a sad little man. Go away from me," she snapped.
Inside, in the witness box, the arcade director was no less feisty.
Tribunal lawyer John Gallagher pumped her for information like a customer on a fruit machine, but no matter how often he pulled her arm, he got nothing.
Claiming to know little about her husband's business dealings, she nevertheless explained that his current exile from Ireland stemmed from events such as one in 1983, when he paid £1.3 million tax on a single property deal and "didn't even get a Christmas card from the Revenue".
But compared with Mr Dunlop's version of events, Ms Kennedy's was a whole different ball game. Pool, to be exact.
Among the persecutions the tribunal had unjustly brought her family, she said, was the arrival at the arcade one day of the Criminal Assets Bureau, "searching for corruption, as if it's going to be sitting on top of a pool table".