The seven-storey docklands development had an underground car park suitable for offices twice that height, writes COLM KEENAPublic Affairs Correspondent

PROF NIAMH Brennan, appointed chairwoman of the Dublin Docklands Development Authority in March of last year, is in the eye of a number of storms.

A €400 million-plus storm has to do with the authority’s disastrous involvement in the purchase of the Irish Glass Bottle site in Ringsend at the height of the property boom.

Developer Bernard McNamara is suing the authority for €100 million in relation to that deal, while the authority finds itself forking out €5 million a year in interest on the loan taken out when buying the site.

A €300 million-plus loan was sourced from Anglo Irish Bank when the consortium it belongs to bought the land, which now has negligible value.

Meanwhile, the authority is involved in another brawl to do with a building site on the north side of the Liffey, which again involves Anglo.

A report on that issue commissioned by the board in 2008 from Declan Moylan, of Mason Hayes + Curran, has not been accepted by the current board. Brennan has expressed concerns to Moylan about discussions he had with her predecessor, Donal O’Connor, about his work.

He got terms of reference from the board but also, according to a letter Brennan sent to Moylan in September 2009, had discussions with O’Connor about the “tone and style” of his report.

“At no stage did I suggest that your report ‘contain material to satisfy my own preferences’ and your suggestion that I am seeking to satisfy my own preferences is misplaced,” Brennan wrote.

Brennan in her letter recalled that she had asked Moylan to write a report that “made the facts and circumstances around the events clear”.

She also queried why Seán FitzPatrick had not been queried as part of the inquiry. FitzPatrick was not on the list of suggested interviewees that accompanied Moylan’s terms of reference.

In his response to Brennan, Moylan said he was prepared to finalise his report along the lines of the draft work submitted to O’Connor prior to his leaving the DDDA board (to take on the role of chairman of Anglo). But he wanted an assurance that neither Brennan nor any of her representatives would issue critiques of his work.

This request was never acceded to and the final report never accepted.

Among the reasons why relations between Moylan and Brennan broke down was Moylan’s learning that Brennan had spoken to a DDDA executive about that executive’s pending dealings with Moylan. Brennan said she spoke to the executive “as I wanted to be fair to him”.

Moylan said Brennan wanted him to attribute blame but his terms of reference had sought a forward-looking report, and he had interviewed people on that basis.

At the core of the whole matter is a deal negotiated by the DDDA executive and developer Liam Carroll, which appears to have convinced Carroll that doubling the size of his development was only a matter of time. He built an underground car park twice as large as the development for which he was given planning permission.

The former chief executive of the authority, Paul Maloney, told Moylan and The Irish Times that he did the deal with Carroll because he wanted to ensure that Carroll would hand over land the authority wanted to develop as a park. There was no “conspiracy” involving Anglo/DDDA directors FitzPatrick and Lar Bradshaw.

But Brennan and the new board obviously continue to have concerns. In a statement yesterday a spokesman said the board was concerned at the “deliberate withholding” of material elements of the “secret agreement” entered into by the then executive with Carroll that deceived the board as to its “true objective, which was to facilitate the construction of a 16-storey building to be the future headquarters of Anglo Irish Bank when the planning scheme only allowed for a seven-storey building plus a set back storey.

“We have indicated that we believe the very serious matters raised in the Moylan report should be investigated by an appropriate outside body and we will happily work with that body to help it get to the bottom of what we believe to be serious questions about the behaviour of members of the executive and others at the DDDA at that time.”

It seems the outside body will be the Dáil Committee of Public Accounts.

Meanwhile it is understood Maloney will be a key and helpful witness for the authority in the case being taken against it by McNamara.