Businessman reluctant to pay Dunlop £25,000

Leading businessman Joe Moran has told the tribunal he only reluctantly agreed to pay £25,000 in fees to Frank Dunlop to lobby for the rezoning of his land in north County Dublin.

Mr Moran said his brother, Colm, and a business partner, Michael Hughes, agreed the fees with Mr Dunlop at a meeting in 1992 and he was informed several days later.

"I said there was no way we should have agreed that." However, his colleagues told him this was "the going rate".

At that stage, they had spent hundreds of thousands of pounds on "architects and advisers and everybody else" in trying to develop the lands at Lissenhall, near Swords.

He eventually agreed to pay half upfront and half when Mr Dunlop delivered. "If you want it done, you have to pay it."

Asked about his contact with Mr Dunlop, Mr Moran replied: "Never met him, never spoke to him, never saw him."

He denied an intervention by former minister Ray Burke was pivotal to a decision by him to apply for industrial zoning on the land. He had already decided to seek industrial zoning when Mr Burke, at a meeting in the Burlington Hotel in December 1989, advised him to follow this course.

Rayband Ltd, through which he controlled the land, had already tried and failed to obtain residential zoning for the land, because of objections by a local landowner.

Mr Moran said the land was costing him money, he wasn't going to get housing on it and so industrial zoning was the only alternative. He met Mr Burke at a function and described his problem. Mr Burke said the only development for the land was industrial. He offered to have a word with the IDA.

Mr Moran wrote to Mr Burke, who was then minister for industry and commerce, and formally asked for help. Mr Burke then made representations to the IDA, who responded positively.

He denied Mr Burke was the "genesis" of the application for industrial rezoning.

It was obvious he wasn't going to get housing on the land, he said, and Mr Burke was only acting as you'd expect a politician to act.

He confirmed that neither he nor his companies had ever made any donations to Mr Burke.

Mr Moran said he tended to buy agricultural land and then plan to build houses on it. "But you have to be prepared to spend time, energy and frustration to get the land changed. This is the problem with land today."

He said the Lissenhall deal was a very small deal for him. He was running a public company at the time and this was just a small "add-on".

Mr Moran said the land was still there today, undeveloped and landlocked, with no road frontage.