Gilmartin was 'biggest hustler', Lawlor claims

Former Fianna Fáil TD Mr Liam Lawlor has described the property developer, Mr Tom Gilmartin, as "the biggest hustler and fraudster that ever came to this country".

Mr Gilmartin only wanted to "line his pockets and run", Mr Lawlor claimed during heated exchanges between the two men during yesterday's proceedings.

The former TD, who was conducting his own cross-examination of the witness, said it was now "accountability time" for him, after 15 years of allegations of hearing from Mr Gilmartin.

He described as a "fabrication" the developer's claim that he could raise £500 million to build a massive shopping centre at Quarryvale in west Dublin in the late 1980s. Mr Gilmartin was committing a "financial fraud" before the tribunal that was "as much fantasy as Walt Disney".

Mr Gilmartin did not even have the £300-400,000 needed to close the sale on a house he was buying in Bray at the time, Mr Lawlor claimed.

However, Mr Gilmartin replied that this house sale was eventually closed. The house was bought and paid for. He lost it as a result of events which happened later, but that was a matter for the next module of the tribunal's investigations (dealing with attempts to rezone Quarryvale when the project had been taken over by another developer, Mr Owen O'Callaghan).

Mr Gilmartin accused a "golden circle" of Mr Lawlor "and others" of defrauding him out of his involvement in the Quarryvale scheme. Asked to name who the "others" were, he said they included Mr O'Callaghan and councillors Mr Finbarr Hanrahan, Mr Colm McGrath and Mr Seán Gilbride.

He claimed Mr O'Callaghan paid Mr Lawlor £40,000 that had been "stolen" from his (Gilmartin's) account.

However, Mr Lawlor said Mr O'Callaghan never paid him any money. He accused the witness of "lying through his teeth".

During another exchange, Mr Lawlor said he would not want to be "within a thousand miles" of Mr Gilmartin, to which the witness replied: "Ditto."

Judge Alan Mahon was forced to intervene several times as Mr Lawlor and the witness swapped insults. It "didn't help" if shouting matches erupted, he pointed out.

Mr Lawlor accused Mr Gilmartin of lying over his claim that former Dublin county manager George Redmond gave him a colour-coded map showing the land ownership in Quarryvale in the presence of the former TD. No map was handed out in his presence, he said.

Earlier, Mr Lawlor and Mr Gilmartin clashed over Mr O'Callaghan's plans to develop a separate town centre at Balgaddy, a few miles away from Quarryvale. While Quarryvale, located at the junction of the M50 and the Galway roads, was regarded as the better site, Balgaddy had the town centre zoning for the area.

Mr Lawlor said that if he had had one priority in public life, it was to see something built in north Clondalkin, where the proposed centre at Balgaddy would have been located.

But Mr Gilmartin said the politician's only purpose was to line his own pockets. However, he agreed with Mr Lawlor he had never given him "a penny" in relation to Quarryvale.

Balgaddy would have been a "fine" town centre if Mr Gilmartin had not come in with his plans, Mr Lawlor said. Mr Gilmartin said Mr Lawlor had told him at the time it would never be built upon. In contrast, he had introduced "hope" to the area with his plans for development at Quarryvale.

"But you and a number of your people tried to cash in and when you didn't get your way you tried to make certain I didn't get it off the ground," he told the former TD. Mr Lawlor had made arrangements that "a sucker like me" would never get the project off the ground, he said.