Former assistant and county manager George Redmond has denied before the Mahon tribunal that he ever asked developer Mr Tom Gilmartin for money or that the former TD Mr Liam Lawlor asked the developer for £100,000 in Redmond's office.
Under cross examination by Redmond today, Mr Gilmartin agreed the former Dublin County Council official had never asked him for money but added: "Mr Lawlor asked for you." He said Mr Lawlor and Redmond "had a great double act" going.
Mr Gilmartin said the former Fianna Fáil TD asked him for £100,000 and said: "George will have to be taken care of as well". He alleged this occurred at a meeting in Redmond's office in May 1988. However, Redmond also disputed the developer's account of the meeting.
Redmond is continuing his cross-examination of Luton-based property developer before the Mahon tribunal at Dublin Castle.
Redmond put it to Mr Gilmartin that the scale of the proposed plan for a shopping centre at Quarryvale in the late 1980s, with more than a million-and-a-half square feet of retail space, had "never before" been seen in the history of planning in the State at that time.
Redmond also described the developer's plan to create a retail space with 12,000 free car parking spaces at that location as "preposterous in the extreme".
The former Dublin County Council official, who is serving a jail sentence following his conviction on corruption charges, is disputing Mr Gilmartin's recollection of a meeting the developer claims was held at Redmond's Dublin County Council office in May 1988.
The developer told the tribunal this morning a meeting was arranged by the former Fianna Fáil TD Mr Liam Lawlor and that the issue of land ownership at Palmerstown on the Galway road was discussed.
Mr Gilmartin also said Redmond handed him colour-coded maps of the area, with the land ownership of the 170-plus acre site, which incorporated the Quarryvale site, indicated on it. It had been arranged by Mr Lawlor that he would get the maps and the detail of the land ownership, he said.
Redmond denied this took place at the May meeting, however, and said he could not possibly have had such a map available without knowing of Mr Gilmartin's plans for the site, which he described as "a gargantuan area of land".
Mr Gilmartin insisted he did not discuss his plans for Quarryvale at that meeting and had not, at that time, made Mr Lawlor aware of his plans to develop the site. The Quarryvale plans were not discussed in detail until a later meeting in July, at which a property adviser friend of Mr Gilmartin's was also present, Mr Gilmartin claimed.
The developer claimed Redmond had "deliberately confused" two meetings, one which was an introductory meeting at which Mr Lawlor was present. The other was a meeting at which a "substantial sum" of money was discussed. "I'd say you have good reason not to remember that," Mr Gilmartin said.
Continually referring to himself in the third person, Redmond said he had was not "county manager" at the time of the alleged meetings. "He [Redmond] had very important functions," Redmond said. He also had finance and he had staff, but it would be "totally erroneous" to claim he was a deputy for the-then county manager Mr Feely, Redmond said.
Mr Gilmartin said he had "worked within the rules" when it came to his planning applications. He also said that in Quarryvale he had put forward a scheme that created 20,000 jobs.
Redmond replied: "In your time there wasn't a single job created."
"No - you seen to that, Mr Redmond," Mr Gilmartin responded.