CORK DEVELOPER Owen O'Callaghan has agreed he paid £1.8 million (€2.2 million) to lobbyist Frank Dunlop between 1991 and 2001.
The planning tribunal is questioning Mr O'Callaghan as part of the Quarryvale II module, an investigation into allegations of corruption concerning the rezoning of land on which the Liffey Valley shopping centre is built.
Mr O'Callaghan hired Mr Dunlop to ensure the land at Quarryvale was rezoned for shopping centre development by Dublin County Council. Mr Dunlop had said he paid councillors to ensure they voted to support the project.
The tribunal heard Mr Dunlop and his companies, Frank Dunlop and Associates and Shefran Ltd, were paid £1.8 million over 10 years. The payments included three that came to £80,000 to Shefran Ltd in advance of a vote on Quarryvale in May 1991.
More than £950,000 of the total figure was paid after the tribunal was established in 1998 and included Mr Dunlop's legal fees.
Mr O'Callaghan agreed the payments were made.
He also agreed he did not produce invoices to his bank, AIB, for the three 1991 Shefran payments totalling £80,000. Moreover, though he said the invoices were in his possession, he did not show them to his bookkeeper, Aidan Lucey, to auditors Deloitte and Touche, or to his partner in the Quarryvale development, developer Tom Gilmartin.
Counsel for the tribunal Patricia Dillon SC said the first time he produced the invoices was when the tribunal came looking for them.
Mr O'Callaghan said the invoices were in his office in Cork with a bunch of 50 or 60 files and he was too busy to look for them.
Ms Dillon read into the record part of a letter written to AIB by John Deane, Mr O'Callaghan's solicitor and business partner in Cork in February 1993.
The letter indicated Mr O'Callaghan's company Riga Ltd had incurred expenses totalling £400,000 to secure the Quarryvale zoning. The figure included £150,000 spent on various expenses directly related to Quarryvale and for which invoices have not been produced to the bank, the letter noted.
Mr O'Callaghan said the letter had been written "loosely".
Ms Dillon said Mr Deane appeared to be a meticulous solicitor and was not in the habit of using loose language.
"That could suggest a sum of £150,000 . . . was off the books as it were, and was paid to secure the Quarryvale zoning?" Ms Dillon suggested. "No, absolutely not," Mr O'Callaghan replied.
