Man of many words finds some things don't add up

Frank Dunlop is back at the tribunal for the first time in a year, as deft and polysyllabic as ever.

Not for Frank a single-word reply when a sentence can be delivered, or a brief paragraph when a lengthy disquisition on the ways of Dublin County Council is called for.

Once again, Frank ran us through the ways of "the system" by which councillors harvested payments in return for signing and supporting rezoning motions.

The "going rate" for such support was never less than £1,000 for each rezoning, he explained, and often up to £5,000.

Yet even loquacious Frank has his blind spots.

"I can't add," he confessed, when asked to explain a £40,000 discrepancy between the amount he says he got from landowner Christopher Jones and the amount the tribunal has discovered he actually got.

Then there are certain things he just didn't like to talk about to Mr Jones and many other landowner clients. The bribing of councillors, for example.

"It's a bit like sex, I think. You know there are certain things you don't talk about," Frank sniffed in reply to the questions of tribunal lawyer Patricia Dillon.

She wanted to know why he didn't have "open discussions" with Mr Jones about the irregular expenses he was running up with the councillors.

After all, weren't these business expenses to be recouped from a client like any others?

The former government press secretary sets great store by his classification of different councillors.

In summary, you could say that some were born to be bribed, others grew into the role and yet others learned to have bribes thrust upon them. The rest wouldn't play ball.

But in his various statements to the tribunal, Frank has struggled to be consistent about Mr Jones. Like Mark Antony at Julius Caesar's funeral, he praises him as "honourable" and "a gentleman of the old school".

When he last ran into the 81-year-old businessman, Mr Jones insisted on picking up the tab for his lunch.

In his original interviews with tribunal lawyers, Mr Dunlop did not indicate that Mr Jones knew his money was being used to buy the support of politicians.

Now, however, Frank is adamant Mr Jones and Mr Hussey knew "the ways of the world".

Mr Jones would need to have had "an IQ of less than 0.5 per cent" not to have understood what was meant in their conversation, he told us.

The tribunal will ultimately have to decide whether Frank's world and the "ways of the world" are one and the same.