SATURDAY PROFILE: Noel Smyth is a shrewd business operator, having worked with Ben Dunne and Dermot Desmond, but has just withdrawn from his battle for property company Dunloe Ewart, writes Colm Keena
Noel Smyth played a central role in the humiliation of Charles Haughey by the McCracken tribunal and there are a number of people who will never forgive him for it. Smyth held secret talks with Haughey to discuss the millions the former taoiseach had received from Smyth's client, Ben Dunne, and then told the tribunal about those conversations.
Haughey, Smyth explained to the tribunal, had mistakenly thought that because Smyth was a solicitor, the secret conversations were covered by solicitor-client privilege. But he was Dunne's solicitor, not Haughey's. Asked to do so by the tribunal, he revealed what had transpired between him and Haughey. When Haughey disputed Smyth's version of events, Smyth was able to produce the telephone logs from his Fitzwilliam Square offices showing contacts between him and Haughey at the times he'd said they occurred. Haughey was snookered.
Many people felt Haughey had been in some way betrayed by Smyth. However, the secret talks between Haughey and Smyth over the Dunne payments had begun in 1994, long before they ever became public. And when they did become public, Smyth advised Haughey to come clean and to accept an offer from Ben Dunne to pay Haughey's tax bill. Haughey refused. In hindsight it seems obvious that Haughey was foolish not to take Smyth's advice.
It is the quality of his advice, coupled with his quick mind, aggression and loyalty to his clients, which made Smyth's career as a solicitor a success story. He gave what was considered top-class advice to some of the biggest property developers in the State and made a lot of money doing so. Then he moved on to become a property developer himself.
Office and apartment developments in London, and a large English property investment portfolio were built up during the 1980s. He was also involved in a number of Irish developments, including the purchase and sale of the H Williams outlets in the late 1980s, and the development of a Galway shopping centre. By the end of the 1980s, Smyth was already a very rich man.
Unusually, perhaps, for such an aggressive and ambitious man, he is religious. The tour of the St Thérèse relics here last year was organised by Bishop Comiskey and Father Linus Ryan and at least part paid for by Smyth. He is known to be a regular Mass-goer. He takes his Catholicism seriously and is an admirer of St Thérèse. His home in south Co Dublin is called Lisieux. Sources say he finds the simplicity of the saint, and the calm that can be found in a church, to be refuges from the complexity and trickery which goes with multimillion property deals and tax packages.
Property development is a tough business and creating multinational structures aimed at reducing tax bills to as close as possible to zero is not the sort of area one associates with followers of St Thérèse, but Smyth has obviously somehow managed to marry them.
He doesn't show the slightest intention of slowing down, and what exactly drives him is not clear. Money would seem to be an obvious answer. Others say that he has plans for his money that go further than just stashing it away in basement vaults or splurging it on homes around the world. Perhaps he just likes the wheeling and dealing.
When Bishop Comiskey returned from an alcohol clinic in the US some years ago, Smyth counselled him before he talked to the media. Again the advice was to come clean, to open up and get the media on your side.
Smyth is the son of a golf professional and his childhood up to the age of 14 involved a number of moves as his father Patrick moved clubs. Galway, Limerick, Kilkenny, Tralee and Bray were the stops along the way. Secondary school was St Brendan's CBS, in Bray. When he did badly in his Leaving Certificate he gave himself a kick and put his head down. He never again did badly in an exam.
After studying law in UCD, he worked in a number of practices before setting up his own firm, Noel Smyth & Co, in 1981. He had already worked for a number of significant property developer clients and some of them went with him when he set up on his own.
His reputation grew, and when Dermot Desmond was putting together the infamous Telecom or Johnston Mooney and O'Brien site deal in the early 1990s, he consulted Smyth and offered him a cut in the action if Smyth could come up with a suitable tax package. The package was never used and Smyth never got the cut.
When some of the details of the deal - which saw millions being made on the old bakery site before it was sold on to Telecom Éireann - became public, Smyth continued to act for Desmond. Then the two men parted and Desmond took on the services of someone else.
Why exactly the two men parted at that time is not clear. If there was any bust-up it can't have been too serious, as a few years later, in 1995, when Desmond was selling his stake in NCB to Ulster Bank, he again sought Smyth's services.
Ben Dunne was another client of Smyth's. When Dunne was caught in a hotel in Florida with cocaine and a call girl, it was Smyth who gave him advice on how to handle the matter. He plea bargained with the authorities and advised Dunne to be open and up front with the media back in Ireland. The strategy worked brilliantly.
After that, it seems, Smyth and Dunne grew close, too close in the eyes of other members of the Dunne family. Concerned at the influence Smyth had over Ben Dunne, they initiated the process of removing him from the group. It was during the battle which ensued that Dunne threatened to reveal his payments to Haughey if the clash with his siblings ever went to court. The matter was settled out of court but a few years later the fact of the payment leaked. The tribunal was appointed and soon Haughey's reputation was ruined.
It seems it was Smyth's role in the tribunal's proceedings which led to the bust-up with Desmond, who admired Haughey and had just a year earlier given him some money himself.
Post Dunnes Stores, Ben Dunne became involved in the property scene and in Dunloe. When he decided to get out of the business some time later, Smyth took over. Today, the company owns the Cherrywood site in south Co Dublin, which is up for sale, as well as a site on Sir John Rogerson's Quay.
Desmond has built up a 17 per cent stake in recent times and last week sought an e.g.m where one of the motions was for Smyth's removal as chairman. The move was presumably sparked by Desmond's calculation that the entire share capital of Dunloe could be bought for less than the value of the property it owns. It may well be that Desmond also took some pleasure from the knowledge that his move caused so much trouble for Smyth.
Desmond worked with Phil Monahan, another property developer who has worked with Smyth in the past and who has fallen out with him. A third figure, Liam Carroll, the force behind Zoe Developments, has also built up a stake in the company and it is not clear how he will now work with Desmond and Monahan.
Smyth, however, yesterday announced what looks like his intention to walk away from Dunloe, the project he spent most of his time on in recent years. His announcement that he is selling his stake to Pascal Taggart could make you think he has had to move out because of Desmond moving in. On the other hand, the price agreed with Taggart, when compared with the price Smyth paid for his shares over the years, indicates a profit for Smyth from the whole affair of in the region of €30 million. Would that we could all suffer such defeats.