Successful radio applicant gave Burke £35,000

The chief executive of a company which bid successfully for the first national independent radio licence made a donation of £35,000 to the former Fianna Fail minister, Mr Ray Burke, at a time in 1989 when Mr Burke held Cabinet responsibility for broadcasting policy. Mr Oliver Barry paid the money to Mr Burke in May 1989, two weeks before the general election and three months before his company, Century Communications, started broadcasting nationally.

This and other licences were awarded by the Independent Radio and Television Commission following a keenly-contested competition involving a large number of bidders.

Mr Barry (59) was revealed yesterday as the third big donor to Mr Burke in the May/June period of 1989 when lawyers for the Flood tribunal sought to compel his appearance before the chairman, Mr Justice Flood. Mr Burke was already known to have received £30,000 from Joseph Murphy Structural Engineering and £30,000 from Rennicks Manufacturing.

Mr Burke acknowledges having received £117,000 in the three weeks before the 1989 election.

Yesterday's evidence directly contradicts Mr Burke's Dail statement of September 1997 in which he claimed that £30,000 was the "largest contribution" he had received during an election campaign. At the time, only the Murphys payment was known.

He was accused subsequently of misleading the Dail for not revealing that he had in fact received two payments for £30,000, one from Murphys and another from Rennicks Manufacturing. Now it is clear he received three.

This is the second link between donations to Mr Burke and the allocation of radio licences. The former chief executive of the Murphy group (which includes JMSE), Mr Liam Conroy, was involved with the application by Capital Radio for one of the Dublin radio licences. This bid was successful and Capital was launched in July 1989.