Jomac

 

 

 

In the light of recent flights of righteousness by the Irish Public and their politicians it is worth reproducing this report by Joe MacAnthony.

 

 

 

 

 This Practice Must Be Stopped

An Investigation by Joe Mac Anthony and Paul Murphy

 

Sunday Independent   June 24 1974

 

After months of investigation, the Sunday Independent now believes there are grounds for a public inquiry into whether local authority representatives should declare their financial interest in matters coming before the Councils on which they sit as members.

We believe also that there is need for examination of a system which legally allows councillors to profit at a later date from motions which they originally voted upon as public representatives.

Ironically, the piece of legislation which demanded that they do so was repealed in 1941.

Apart from a public health ruling dating back to 1878, the only modern legislation which could demand a declaration of interest is Section 115 of the Housing Act, 1966. However, the Government Information Service says this section has not yet been brought into operation.

Nor is there any pressure to create a register of business interests which would show publicly if councillors made a financial gain as a result of motions they voted on previously.

According to former Councillor Niall Andrews, a motion which he brought before the Council over a year ago to have representatives declare their business interest failed because he could not get a seconder from among his 24 fellow councillors.

Mr. Andrews, who stated he would raise the conflict of interest issue if he was re?elected to the Council, lost his seat in last week's election.

The absence of strict rules on the subject means that councillors who are auctioneers can freely vote to have land rezoned with a steep rise in its value. Later, they can act as agents in selling the same land with a big increase in commission because of their earlier vote.

We have examined certain land deals in the County Dublin area where councillors have been involved in precisely the manner described.

None of these representatives acted illegally. Their business activities were entirely within the law.

Mountgorry Site

 

One of the case where this problem occurred was at Mountgorry, near Swords, Co. Dublin.

In our inquiries into this transaction, we found that a member of Dublin County Council who seconded a motion to the Council on February 11th, 1971 which increased the value of a site there by almost 400,000 pounds, was allocated 15,000 pounds from the sale of the land under a contract registered last November (1973).

The councillor involved is Raphael P. Burke, who has sat for the Swords area on the County Council since 1967. Mr. Burke is also the Member for North County Dublin in Dail Eireann.

Under the terms of the contract, Mr. Burke is named as being entitled to £15,000 or 5.85% of the net proceeds from the sale of 35 acres of industrial land at Mountgorry, near Swords, to Pagebar (Ireland) Ltd.

It is the same piece of land which Councillor Burke strongly urged should be newly zoned from agricultural to industrial use in February 1971 on the grounds that it would bring more jobs to the Swords area.  The motion concerned was passed by 16 votes to 4 although the professional planning staff of Dublin County Council had strongly objected to development on the site.

It was also passed at a time when the person who joined in setting up the company which was to eventually pay Mr. Burke had options on the land involved.

We have spoken to Mr. Burke about the Mountgorry transaction. According to him, the contract signed for the sale of the land and registered in the company's office has not now gone through.

He also made it clear that he regarded the zoning motion which he seconded and his later contracted payment from the sale of the land as entirely unrelated.

He said he had no interest in the site when he urged its new zoning.

Be that as it may, we found that Mr. Burke had already shown an interest in negotiating the sale of a portion of the land to be newly zoned three months before his motion came before the Council.

We have also found that three weeks to the day after the resolution was passed, two men commercially associated with Mr. Burke set up the company which was later to sell the newly zoned land to Pagebar Ltd. Their partner in the venture was the man who already held options on the Mountgorry land. (A man named Patrick Langan, whose name was mistakenly dropped in the editing at this point but was identified later in the article.)

The site at Mountgorry lies about a half mile from Swords village on the main Swords/Malahide road.

It has no services, it lies beneath the flight path to Dublin Airport and it forms part of the green belt around the growing village of Swords.

These were some of the reasons why the planners zoned it as agricultural land when they drew up the County Draft Development plan in 1967.

The distinction in zoning is important. Land designated for agricultural use holds the lowest value on the property developer's scale. Re-zoning it for industrial or housing use would increase its value by at least 300%.

In the case of Mountgorry, the planners re?expressed their belief that it should remain agricultural when they drew up the 1970 Draft Development Plan.

However, at the same time as the experts were drawing up their zoning regulations, an auctioneer called Patrick Langan was also looking at Mountgorry.

In 1970, Mr. Langan believed that Mountgorry was a good bet for re?zoning. At that time he began picking up options at low prices. Partly because the lands owners did not believe it would be re-zoned.

On October 8th of that year, the first attempt to change the zoning designation of Mountgorry came before Dublin County Council's Planning Committee.

Councillor Jim Guinan proposed that 17 acres in the area owned by another Councillor Joe Dignam be newly zoned from agricultural to residential land. Mr. Guinan, an auctioneer with considerable experience in land usage, found his views at variance with the professional planners. He had a seconder, however, in Mr. Burke's father, P.J. Burke, and the motion was passed by 6 votes to 2.

Once the motion on the Dignam land was passed, Councillor John Boland proposed that the land adjacent to it on which Mr. Langan had options be re-zoned.

Mr. Boland's motion was so all embracing that it was deferred to set a boundary line on what was to be changed.

On October 20th, 1970, the Planning Committee again discussed the Mountgorry land. The assistant County Manager made a strong argument against land other than the Dignam section being re-zoned and even asked that the decision relating to the Dignam land be reconsidered in view of his report.

After discussion, the Dignam land was rezoned industrial instead of residential and no decision was made on the adjoining land ? where Mr. Langan had options.

Despite this, Mr. Langan remained optimistic and approached a building contractor to submit a planning application for an industrial estate on the site. The application was lodged on December 4, 1970.

On February 3, 1971, the application was turned down for four reasons ? the land was zoned agricultural, it was in a noise zone, there was no provision for sewage and to give permission would be contrary to good planning practice.

Exactly, eight days after this refusal, a fresh motion came before the Council to rezone the land, making it eligible for industrial development.

The motion proposed by Councillor Guinan, was seconded by Raphael Burke, who made the argument for the change.

At the meeting, the Assistant County Manager left no doubts about the planning experts view on the councillors' motion to change the zoning of the land.

He stated that "no professional officer on the Council's staff was prepared to recommend the adoption of the changes proposed."

Despite this, Mr. Burke urged that the land be rezoned. He said he wanted to bring more jobs to the Swords area.

To illustrate the land he wished changed, according to those present, Mr. Burke held up a map of the district and pointed out the site he was concerned with. It corresponded to the land which Mr. Langan held options on.

Although Mr. Burke knew Mr. Langan at the time, he said he was in no way connected with him when the motion was passed. In fact, he said he was not interested in the land as a business proposition at all.

If this was the case on February 11th 1971 when the councillors overrode the planners and passed the rezoning motion by 16 votes to 4, it had not been the case three months earlier.

According to one of those with a vested interest in the Mountgorry land, he was approached in October 1970 by Mr. Burke's father who told him that his son was in contact with two men who were prepared to buy a portion of his land. The offer was turned down.

At the time, Raphael Burke was associated with a firm of builders whose principals, Brennan and McGowan, hailed from Co. Mayo as did Mr. Langan and the Burke family.

Three weeks after the council motion to re?zone the Mountgorry site as industrial was passed, the same Brennan and McGowan joined Patrick Langan in setting up a company called Dublin Airport Industrial Estates.

This was the company which was later to contract to sell a large portion of the Mountgorry land to Pagebar (Ireland) Ltd. and to pay Mr. Burke 15,000 pounds under the heading of "Planning."

By early 1972, Dublin Airport Industrial Estates was making strong efforts to get full planning permission for an industrial estate at Mountgorry and Mr. Burke was telling the Drogheda Independent that the company was preparing to build an industrial estate which would bring thousands of jobs to the Swords area. He did not mention that he was was commercially involved with Messrs. Brennan and McGowan whose brainchild Dublin Airport Industrial Estates was. Nor did he mention the likelihood that the company was involved in what would turn out to be a classic piece of land speculation.

If readers of the Drogheda Independent were unaware of this, equally unknowing were the owners of the Mountgorry site, whose land was now being bought up by Dublin Airport Industrial Estates under Mr. Langans options.

When they made the option deal with Mr. Langan, the owners had little idea of the potential market value of their land.

Under the option, the owner of 20 acres, a man named James Dickie of Seatown Castle, had to sell his land for around £110,000.

Dublin Airport Industrial Estates later contracted with Pagebar Ltd to sell the same land for £335,675.

A second owner, Stephen Larkin, had to sell his optioned land for 58,000 pounds. It was to be sold to Pagebar for £210,510.

The company thus stood to make around £388,000 profit out of the fateful rezoning motion on February 11, 1971. And the only outlay involved was in buying up Mr. Lang's options, obtaining planning permission and, of course, getting the land rezoned.

Mr. Langan's options cost the company £10,000. Planning permission cost £4,000 in payment to the architect involved, Mr. Desmond McCarthy. The most expensive professional involved in the deal would appear to have been Mr. Burke.

 

A later portion of the article dealt with a project which did not involve Mr. Burke.

 

 

Letter to The Examiner August 1999

 

The following was emailed to The Examiner in August 1999 (unpublished, I believe.)

 

 

 

Dear Sir:

 I was intrigued to see that leaked material designed to damage Mr. James Gogarty's credibility as a witness in the Flood Tribunal contained information suggesting that the sending of mass cards to otherwise healthy people constituted a threat.

In June 1974, when an article I wrote with Paul Murphy described in much detail how Mr. Ray Burke had profited from a rezoning decision he helped make as a Dublin County Councillor, I too received a mass card.

It came from Mr. Burke's father.

I was in good health at the time. As to my mental state, I believe the article established fairly conclusively that I was of very sound mind.

For those who seek proof in such matters, the church where the mass was to be said was in either Clarendon Street or Lane. I'm sure the churchly auditors would have kept a record of the mass for spiritual purposes and how much was paid for the Revenue Commissions (on same.)

Sincerely,

 

Joe MacAnthony

 

 

Irish Hospital Sweepstakes Scam