George Redmond, the former assistant Dublin city and county manager, has been found guilty of corruption and remanded in custody for sentence on December 17th.
A jury at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court returned 10-2 majority guilty verdicts on two charges that he received £10,000 from car salesman Mr Brendan Fassnidge as a bribe relating to the sale of a right-of-way from Dublin County Council at the Lucan bypass.
The jury spent six hours and 42 minutes on its deliberations before it returned its verdicts on day 13 of the trial, after spending one night in a hotel.
Judge Michael White thanked the members of the jury for their care and consideration to the case and exempted them from jury service for 10 years.
Redmond (79) had pleaded not guilty to charges that while an agent or servant of Dublin County Council, he corruptly received £10,000 from Mr Fassnidge between June 1st, 1987, and May 31st, 1988, as an inducement or reward for doing or forbearing to do anything in respect of the sale of a right of way at Palmerstown by the county council.
He also denied that as an agent he corruptly accepted £10,000 for himself as an inducement or reward for showing favour to Mr Fassnidge, in relation to the sale of the right of way
During the trial, Mr Fassnidge told the jury he gave £10,000 cash in a brown envelope in his own home to Redmond when he was trying to buy a strip of county council land as a right-of-way into and out of the then new Lucan bypass where he was building a petrol station.
He said he remembered Redmond drank a glass of wine before leaving his house with the brown envelope in which was the money his bank had given him earlier that day.
Mr Fassnidge said that acquisition of the right-of-way was an essential condition of the planning permission that had been granted to him for the petrol station and added that three days later he collected the planning permission at the then Dublin County Council's office in O'Connell Street.
He was accompanied by former TD Mr Liam Lawlor in December 1987 to negotiate the price of the right-of-way with the Dublin Corporation Valuation Office which then acted for the county council in these matters.
The valuation officer indicated it would cost £30,000 which he thought was "a very big consideration" for it, but he got his planning permission after giving Redmond the £10,000.
Det Insp Patrick Byrne told the jury that Redmond made a voluntary statement to him and Det Insp, now Supt, William McDermott, in which he claimed he received a cheque "out of the blue" for £5,000 from Mr Fassnidge in September or October 1988.
He told gardaí at Harcourt Square Garda station on April 1st, 1999, that he lodged it into an account he had with Ulster Bank and could identify it for them.
The jury also heard that Dublin County Council officials had been totally opposed to the petrol station project and that the councillors, by a large majority, had directed the granting of planning permission for it through a section 4 motion proposed by Mr Lawlor.
Mr Lawlor, who had been tendered as a witness by the prosecution, said he and other councillors were briefed in the West County Hotel by Mr Fassnidge about his planning permission difficulty and that led to him proposing the section 4 motion.
Mr Lawlor said Mr Fassnidge had also phoned his office many times and he could not have been involved in proposing the section 4 motion if the briefing had had not taken place.
He said there was "a general willingness" among councillors to do something practicable to help Mr Fassnidge, who had lost his business when it was liquidated and who had nothing else at the time. He said the council had put a £120,000 price tag on the strip which to him seemed "exorbitant".