IT WAS the day of the rotten Ballyvolane potatoes and the Mullingar site designation. Each matter came with suggestions that Mr Michael Lowry might have used his political position to gain favour for Dunnes Stores.
In the case of the potatoes, the suggestion failed to stick. In the case of the Mullingar site, however, yesterday's evidence from a Fine Gael TD, Mr Paul McGrath, suggested Mr Lowry believed that those who gave significant sums to party funds should be treated favourably by it in return. Mr Lowry is expected to contest this.
The Ballyvolane potatoes were found to be rotten in 1995, and in May of that year Mr Brendan Walsh, manager of the Dunnes Stores outlet in Ballyvolane, Co Cork, received a summons from the Department of Agriculture under the Food Act for selling unfit produce.
Mr Walsh found it unusual that such a summons should come from the Department as they normally came from the health board. He rang Mr Lowry to get information about the procedure involved in this case. Yesterday he agreed with a suggestion from counsel for the tribunal, Mr Anthony Aston, that he had also contacted Mr Lowry with a view to getting the case adjourned.
The case was indeed adjourned and Dunnes Stores was subsequently fined Pounds 50 with Pounds 150 costs.
The suggestion was that Mr Lowry had procured the adjournment, a suggestion that was put by tribunal chairman, Mr Justice McCracken. But Mr Garrett Cooney SC for Dunnes Stores objected, saying that Mr Lowry would give evidence to the contrary.
What happened, Mr Lowry will say, is that he simply contacted the Chief State Solicitor's office in Cork asking about the case and was told it was being adjourned. He merely passed this information on to Mr Walsh.
He also contacted the Department of Agriculture about the matter, but it emerged that this was merely to get general information about the procedures involved. It was, the programme manager in the Department of Agriculture agreed, "a relatively trivial matter", treated by him as being "of complete insignificance".
It has also emerged that a trawl through all Government departments asking if any member of the Oireachtas had ever made any representations on behalf of Dunnes Stores produced only this one incident involving Mr Lowry, the case of the rotten Ballyvolane potatoes.
The Mullingar tax designation affair was more serious. Mr Paul McGrath TD, a member of Westmeath County Council, had opposed the designation of a particular development site in Mullingar for tax and other incentives. Such designation, it was suggested, would have benefited Dunnes Stores, which was to be the anchor tenant in the retail development proposed for the site.
After Westmeath County Council had rejected the proposed designation of the site, the developer involved, Mr Derry McPhillips, complained to his local Fine Gael TD, Mr Phil Hogan of Carlow-Kilkenny, that Fine Gael councillors in Mullingar had not been supportive of his development plan. Mr Hogan referred Mr McPhillips to Mr Lowry, then Fine Gael chairman.
Mr McPhillips had been making a complaint after the decision was taken, rather than making representations before the decision, Mr Hogan told the tribunal yesterday. He (Mr Hogan) asked Mr Lowry to take a phone call on the matter, not because of his connection with Dunnes Stores as its supplier of refrigeration services but because he was party chairman.
Mr McGrath told the tribunal he had opposed the designation of the site because he felt the council "did not need to give the richest family in the country additional money". If the particular development scheme for the site was given designated urban renewal status the benefits to Dunnes Stores would be Pounds 4.5 to Pounds 5 million, he said, and that the arrival of the supermarket chain would result in the distortion of the local retail trade.
Mr Lowry approached him in Leinster House and told him he was sending out the wrong message to Mr Ben Dunne. He said that Mr Dunne was a major contributor to the Fine Gael party, Fine Gael was in debt, and the council should perhaps change its decision.
Mr McGrath said yesterday that he told Mr Lowry in response to "eff off", meaning that he should mind his own business.
According to Mr Lowry's counsel, Mr McGrath has presented "quite a distorted version" of this conversation and Mr Lowry will give a different account. Mr Lowry began giving evidence yesterday afternoon and will continue today.
A report from the Dunnes payments tribunal in Thursday's editions headed "Trivial matters make way for more serious claims" stated that Westmeath County Council had rejected the proposed urban renewal designation of the site for a shopping centre in Mullingar proposed by Mr Derry McPhillips and Deerland Construction Limited, and that Mr McPhillips had complained to Fine Gael TD Mr Phil Hogan and, later, to Mr Michael Lowry. In fact, the designation had been granted prior to Mr McPhillips's approach and his complaint was by way of protest at the opposition of Fine Gael to the proposal.