A senior official with Dublin County Council, Mr Tom Doherty, refused to check with his recently retired former superior, Mr George Redmond, when it became clear that a manager's order that he had initiated to pay £30,000 to Mr Michael Bailey for nine acres of open space development at Swords was proving controversial, he told the tribunal.
Just before Mr Redmond's retirement as assistant city and county manager, he had sent a memo to Mr Doherty, a principal officer in the development, recommending the purchase of the land for £30,000. Mr Doherty did not seek an independent valuation, he told Ms Patricia Dillon SC, for the tribunal. He felt it was a good deal and initiated a manager's order authorising the council law agent to complete the deal.
Discussions had taken place between Mr Bailey, Mr Redmond and Mr Michael Lynch, of the Parks Department. It was the culmination of the council's attempts to acquire land in Ward River Valley, Swords, for a linear open space development.
He was not aware of any problems over the land purchase, he said, until he saw a letter from Mr Lynch to Mr Dan O'Sullivan, another principal officer. Mr Lynch had met Mr Bailey in October that year when the builder had raised a particular aspect of his agreement with Mr Redmond.
Apparently, it had been subject to the council allowing planning permission for a 37-unit housing development at Blanchardstown for Caslan Homes, a Bailey-owned company.
Mr Lynch wrote a full report on foot of which Mr Doherty sought to find out whether the council was in a "full contractual position as yet". He subsequently contacted Mr Bailey and indicated that he had no knowledge of this aspect of the agreement with Mr Redmond. "I refused to incorporate it as a term of the land acquisition," he said.
Asked whether he had contacted Mr Redmond to clarify matters, he said he had not. "He was six months into retirement by then . . . It was immaterial whether George Redmond had agreed to have a condition of the planning permission waived. It was obvious that Michael Bailey was not willing to go ahead on the basis of the manager's order of June 20th."
In the event, it transpired that Mr Bailey was facing a bill of £18,500 on foot of planning permission, which Mr Doherty insisted he had not known about at the time. Eventually the council agreed the figure to be paid for the land at Swords was £39,000.
Earlier Mr Peter Mycroft, an electrical engineer from London, had confirmed to the tribunal that Mr Joseph Murphy jnr had been present in Wandsworth on June 6th, 7th and 8th and on each of the five days commencing June 12th, 1989, as he said he had. This was important since Mr Gogarty asserted that Mr Murphy had been present at the meeting in the house of Mr Ray Burke when the £30,000 political donation had been handed over, probably on June 8th.
The Moriarty tribunal held a sitting on Monday from which members of the public were excluded. The identity of the witness or witnesses questioned is not known.
The last public sitting of the tribunal was on December 21st, 1999. Public hearings of the tribunal resume on Thursday, January 27th next, at 10.30 am.