please delete

raymon

Please delete

nesf

Provide a more detailed OP than a single short question please. In this case give some information as to what you're referring to as not all people will know what meeting you're talking about.

later12

For the benefit of the thread

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2011/0201/1224288694192.html?via=mr

The tribunal was investigating an allegation by Tom Gilmartin that developer Owen O’Callaghan had told him that, alongside other payments to politicians, he had “given a five-figure sum to Micheál Martin”.

It should be said that this allegation is extremely fuzzy and based on mere hearsay. It does not amount to a substantial charge of impropriety, let alone evidence of wrongdoing. Gilmartin’s own evidence to the tribunal on the matter was confused and inconsistent. And no record of any such five-figure sum was discovered by the tribunal.

The difficulty, though, is that everything else about payments by O’Callaghan to Martin is equally fuzzy. A payment of £1,000 in June 1989 was described by O’Callaghan as a donation to a school mini-project given via Martin but by Martin as a political donation to his campaign.

O’Callaghan first told the tribunal that £5,000 he gave Martin in 1991 was for the Atlantic Pond Restoration Fund and was given to Martin in his capacity as lord mayor of Cork. He then changed his evidence to say that it was “a political contribution to Micheál Martin for the June 1991 local elections”.

In relation to this donation Martin’s evidence was that “there was no issuing of receipts at that time in terms of election contributions”.

As for the £5,000 cheque, it was actually lodged to an account held by Martin’s wife Mary, not in Cork, but in Allied Irish Bank in Baggot Street in Dublin. (She was living in Dublin at the time and working for Fianna Fáil.)

Martin explained this by saying that at the time there were “no issues in terms of where you lodged the contribution or in terms of the manner in which you dealt with it . . . you used your personal money in your accounts, political contributions would have gone into your accounts”.

Martin had no memory of a meeting with lobbyist Frank Dunlop in November 1991, which was recorded in Dunlop’s diary.

More significantly, he denied point blank ever bringing O’Callaghan to “meet other politicians”.

He said that if he had ever brought O’Callaghan to meet Bertie Ahern he would remember it. Yet when the tribunal showed him Ahern’s ministerial diary for April 13th, 1994, which seemed to record a meeting with O’Callaghan and Martin, he could not recall it.

He denied point blank having any involvement whatsoever with the Quarryvale development.

We need to hear Martin talk clearly about the whole culture of money in Fianna Fáil.

From my point of view, I would underline that the word 'fuzzy' is probably the most operative word in this entire article.

nesf

raymon wrote: »

Please delete

Hey raymon, I think later10 has done the research for you!

raymon

nesf wrote: »

Hey raymon, I think later10 has done the research for you!

yes , thanks to later10 ! That answers my question