Burke `had asked IRTC man' to propose solicitor

Then minister Mr Ray Burke asked a family friend and Fianna Fail supporter, whom he appointed to the Independent Radio and Television Commission, to nominate on his behalf the IRTC's solicitor, bank and accountants, the tribunal has heard.

Mr Donal O'Sullivan, a retired teacher from Cork, nominated the people requested by the minister at the inaugural meeting of the IRTC in October 1988. Asked yesterday if he felt less than independent for doing this, Mr O'Sullivan replied: "I didn't, really, because that's the way government works."

Before the IRTC meeting, Mr Burke rang him and asked to meet. Mr Burke was going to a Fianna Fail function in Mallow, so the two men met in Fermoy for 10 minutes. Mr Burke asked Mr O'Sullivan to propose certain persons for positions that would appear on the agenda.

"When he mentioned the airport branch of the Ulster Bank as the bankers, I said, `That's a bit out of town. It might be more appropriate to have it in the city.' He said, `That's my own bank'," Mr O'Sullivan recalled.

The witness said he knew Mr Burke "casually, on a shake-hands basis". He had met him at Fianna Fail Ardfheiseanna. His father had been in the Dail with Mr Burke's father. "He was a friendly man but I never had much of a conversation with him, he was always in a hurry."

He didn't know the solicitor chosen (Mr Michael O'Connor of John S. O'Connor), but on thinking about it he remembered the family involved were constituents of Mr Burke's in north county Dublin. There had been publicity about a voting issue in which a solicitor was acquitted, he recalled.

(The principal of the firm, Mr Pat O'Connor, was cleared of charges of double voting in the 1982 general election. At the time, he was Mr Charles Haughey's election agent. He died in 1998.)

Mr John Fox, barrister, for Mr Burke, said the minister accepted he had put forward nominations for solicitor and banker, both of whom were constituents of his. However, he had no involvement with the nomination of accountants. There was no question of them being a constituent. He suggested the witness's memory was faulty.

Mr O'Sullivan said it wasn't. He had never heard the name of the accountants put forward by Mr Burke and had to write it down that night.

Mr O'Sullivan said he had a long connection with Century's cofounder, Mr Oliver Barry, over the years. He had been chairman of the Cork county board of the GAA at the time when Mr Barry was promoting concerts in the association's grounds at Pairc Ui Chaoimh. Mr Barry raised hundreds of thousands of pounds for the GAA.