The Supreme Court has cleared the way for a controversial shelf company to collect a multimillion euro payout from the taxpayer.
English-based Jackson Way Properties is to take its case for up to €118 million in compensation to an arbitrator's hearing in Dún Laoghaire on Wednesday.
Last June, the court set aside an earlier injunction granted to Dún Laoghaire/Rathdown County Council, which would have prevented the arbitration going ahead until the Flood tribunal investigated allegations of bribes paid for the rezoning of the Carrickmines lands.
In a judgment that went unreported at the time, the court found that there wasn't "a scintilla of evidence" that Jackson Way did anything improper in relation to rezoning.
According to the judges, "no-one knows how long (the tribunal) is going to take", and they refused to put off the arbitration "for that indefinite period of time".
The fact that the tribunal was investigating allegations that Jackson Way had made payments to county councillors was dismissed as the "flimsiest of factual bases" for delaying the arbitration hearing.
Yet the question still arises of what happens when Jackson Way is awarded compensation. Since the ownership of the company is unclear, there is no guarantee that the State would be able to retrieve any of this money should it later find that the rezoning was corrupt.
Mr John Caldwell, who denies owning the lands but admits that he holds them "to my order", at one point failed to obey a summons to turn up at the tribunal. In his interim report, Mr Justice Flood listed the Belfast-born lawyer as one of those who failed to co-operate with the tribunal in its dealings so far. Mr James Kennedy, the amusement arcade owner and associate of Mr George Redmond and Mr Liam Lawlor, bought the lands for just €685,000 in the 1980s. Mr Kennedy, who is under investigation for a variety of matters, lives in tax exile in the Isle of Man.
By the early 1990s, ownership was vested in an Isle of Man-based company, Paisley Park Investments. Control of this company was vested in holding companies in the Isle of Man, the British Virgin Islands and Panama. Paisley Park is also alleged to have paid bribes to councillors in an unsuccessful attempt to have the lands rezoned.
Jackson Way is also under investigation by the Criminal Assets Bureau. Last March, CAB raided the offices of Binchys, Mr Caldwell's former law firm. Among the files they found were documents suggesting that Mr Kennedy was the beneficial owner of Jackson Way.
In 1997, Fine Gael councillor Liam Cosgrave proposed the rezoning of most of the Jackson Way lands, but this was defeated. However, councillors later passed a motion rezoning 24 acres of the land, which was proposed by Fianna Fáil's Ms Betty Coffey and seconded by Mr Cosgrave.
In the past month, the Carrickmines lands have also been caught up in the row over archaeological remains in the area. Environmentalists campaigning for the retention of Carrickmines Castle, 40 per cent of which lies in the route of a motorway, have queried the rerouting of the road through lands owned by Jackson Way.
The county council does not dispute that Jackson Way is due compensation for the 22 acres compulsorily acquired for the South-Eastern Motorway.
But it wants this to be based on the agricultural value of the land, rather than the much higher residential zoning value sought by the company.
