Cork developer Owen O’Callaghan has said he did not lobby former taoiseach Albert Reynolds about the Quarryvale development in March 1990, despite a diary entry recording the two men meeting in Cork.
And he told the Mahon tribunal he did not meet lobbyist Frank Dunlop and former taoiseach Bertie Ahern in Leinster House in 1989. Mr O'Callaghan said Luton-based developer Tom Gilmartin was lying when he said he saw the three men together.
At the time, Mr O'Callaghan and Mr Gilmartin were business rivals; they became partners in the Quarryvale project in West Dublin, now the Liffey Valley Shopping Centre, in late 1991.
Mr O'Callaghan said he could not recall meeting Mr Reynolds, then Minister for Finance, in March 1990 and did not know why he met him, but believed it may have been to discuss developments in Cork.
Though he had an option on lands at Neilstown West Dublin at the time, Mr O'Callaghan had signed a deal with Mr Gilmartin that would see that option transferred to him, so he was not interested in West Dublin, he said.
