Former minister Ray Burke warned lobbyist Frank Dunlop to stay off his patch during a meeting in the Dáil bar in the early 1990s.
Giving evidence yesterday, Mr Dunlop said he was engaged as a lobbyist in relation to plans to rezone 70 acres owned by the Christian Brothers at Balheary near Swords. Mr Burke was never in favour of this development.
He said it was possible that Mr Burke did not believe the rezoning plan was justified in the context of the development of Swords. However, he believed the opposition of the former minister was due to the involvement in the project of developer Joe Tiernan, who was associated with Fine Gael.
"Raphael was a Fianna Fáil man through and through. He just did not happen to like anybody in Fine Gael."
Mr Dunlop said it was well known that the former minister had an antipathy to Mr Tiernan. In relation to another of Mr Tiernan's projects, Mr Burke had phoned the Fianna Fáil rooms at Dublin County Council and asked councillors: "Why are we giving that [ expletive deleted] blueshirt support?"
"Ray considered north Co Dublin as his domain and he wanted to know everything that was going on. Then he discovered through his network that Frank Dunlop was in the frame acting on behalf of Joe Tiernan and the Christian Brothers to have land rezoned at Balheary."
He said that in the Dáil bar Mr Burke had said to him: " Stay off, Francis, stay off my patch."
Mr Dunlop said, given Mr Burke's opposition to the plan, he was surprised when he heard that a senior Christian Brother had been advised to write a letter of thanks to Mr Burke after an initial vote to rezone the land had been passed. The rezoning was overturned later.
He said in 1991, when the first attempt was made to rezone the Balheary lands, Mr Burke had still been an influential figure even though as a minister he was no longer serving on the local authority.
He said the then Fianna Fáil whip Pat Dunne had been viewed as a man who would try to see Mr Burke's view implemented.
"I think people would have regarded Pat as being somebody who was at the beck and call of Ray."
Mr Dunlop also suggested that the then Fianna Fáil councillors Jack Larkin and Seán Gilbride would also have been influenced to some degree by Mr Burke.
However the late Fianna Fáil councillor Cyril Gallagher "couldn't give a flying hoot about Ray Burke".
He said councillor Jim Geraghty was also at loggerheads with Mr Burke.
He said current Fianna Fail TD GV Wright "would be very cleverly conscious of whatever view Ray had, and would be either trying to indicate that he was supportive of it or that if he wasn't supportive of it, he wasn't going to do anything that would overtly show that he was going to go against it".
Mr Dunlop said he never had any discussions with Mr Tiernan about paying councillors for their support. He had given £1,000 to councillors Cyril Gallagher, Tony Fox, Liam Cosgrave and Tom Hand. He had no sense that the Christian Brothers knew that councillors would be paid.
He said the focus of attention of the Christian Brothers was "slightly extra-terrestrial".
