Brennan and McGowan, the largest house-building firm in Co Dublin during the 1970s, was the target of more litigation by Dublin County Council than any other developer for breaches of the planning code over unfinished housing estates.

But none of the residents who picketed the council's offices in a desperate effort to make them face their legal obligations could have guessed that Tom Brennan, joint head of the firm with Joe McGowan, was such a close associate of George Redmond.

In his evidence to the Flood tribunal this week, Mr Redmond admitted he had received substantial payments over the years from Mr Brennan. Earlier, the developer himself told the tribunal he would place bets on horses for Mr Redmond, using his own money.

By the mid-1970s, Brennan and McGowan had become the biggest house-builder in Ireland, turning out new houses at the phenomenal rate of up to 700 per year, and far outstripping the output of longer-established builders such as McInerneys and the Gallagher Group.

Kilnamanagh in Tallaght, at that time a fast-developing satellite city in west Dublin, was Brennan and McGowan's most notorious project. It was supposed to be a "landscaped garden suburb" of 1,600 houses, with plenty of open space and numerous other facilities, including even "play lots".

As it trumpeted when this scheme was announced in 1973: "When you buy a home at Kilnamanagh, you get more than just a nice home. You buy a whole community - shops, supermarkets, bank, pub, garage, schools, churches, a community club and 50 acres of open space".

Six years later county councillors were calling for an inquiry into the "mess" which had been created in Kilnamanagh. It was just one huge, unfinished housing estate. Roads were unsurfaced, some of the houses were defective and the open space spoiled by heaps of rubble.

What most angered the councillors who complained about it was that there seemed to be no way of taking action against Brennan and McGowan, by denying the Mayo-born builders planning permission for other schemes until the Kilnamanagh "mess" had been sorted out.

Like most large builders, they operated through a maze of front companies, each set up to carry out a specific development and forming a separate legal entity. (The Gallagher Group, for example, consisted of 50 companies when it went into receivership in 1982).

In December 1983 Brennan and McGowan's assets were estimated at £11 million, and its principals had both acquired stud farms; McGowan buying Hollywoodrath, former home of Matt Gallagher, near Mulhuddart, and Brennan Hilltown Stud near Clonee.

Two years later counsel for a Dublin solicitor seeking redress against the two builders claimed in the High Court that their assets were being "dissipated at an alarming rate"; one of them was said to have assets of just £608,000 while a net liability was recorded for the other.

In March 1989 solicitors acting for Grane Developments, one of the Brennan and McGowan companies, successfully applied to the High Court to have Dublin County Council put into receivership over its non-payment of a planning compensation claim of £1.9 million.

At a council meeting later the same day, the then county manager, Mr Redmond, announced he had just signed a cheque for the full amount, the largest such compensation payment in the history of the State, telling councillors he had no other option.

The Grange case, which related to land at Mountgorry, east of Swords, was extraordinary because it was the first time since the 1963 Planning Act came into force that a local authority had had to pay out a substantial sum in compensation for the refusal of planning permission.

The Mountgorry land, some 35 acres, had been rezoned for industrial development with the help of Ray Burke, the former Fianna Fail TD for Dublin North. Despite this, An Bord Pleanala later refused Grange Developments permission to develop it.

It was also in connection with the rezoning of Mountgorry that Mr Burke received a payment of £15,000 under the heading "planning" in relation to the sale of the land. An extract from the relevant company accounts was published by the Sunday In- dependent in July 1974.

Like Mr Redmond, Mr Burke was closely associated with Brennan and McGowan. As a councillor, he tabled motions to rezone agricultural land which the building firm bought for development; as an auctioneer, he was the sales agent for the hundreds of houses it built in the Swords area.

Another Brennan and McGowan company built his house, Briargate, on its own grounds off the Swords by-pass. It was designed by the group's principal architect, John P. Keenan, who was appointed by Mr Burke as a member of An Bord Pleanala in 1981.

Mr Burke made this and two other appointments to the appeals board on his last day in office as minister for the environment in June 1981. He made two further appointments to the board, including his adviser, Tony Lambert, on his last day in office in November 1982.

Mr Burke's actions had opened him to the accusation that he had undermined public confidence in the political impartiality of the planning process and led directly to the appeals board being "reconstituted" in March 1984 by the Fine Gael-Labour coalition, in the teeth of bitter opposition from Fianna Fail.

Less than two weeks before the new board, appointed at "arm's length" from politicians, took over, Mr Lambert signed an order granting planning permission to Criteria Developments Ltd, a Brennan and McGowan company, for an office scheme in Herbert Street, Dublin.

The proposal, for a wooded site known as the Plantation, had been turned down by Dublin Corporation's planners on amenity grounds. The site was later sold and developed by Treasury Holdings.

The revelation this week that Mr Brennan had such a high-ranking official as George Redmond under financial obligation, paying him a regular retainer for his services, offers another insight into the complex web at the heart of the planning system in Co Dublin during a critical phase.