By Frank Connolly
a 35-acre site at Liscarton was purchased for €500,000 in 2016 and placed on the market for €4.2m a year later, after rezoning
A public inquiry by the Standards in Public Office Commission (SIPO) (13 and 16 June) into the conduct of former Meath County Council Chairperson and Fianna Fáil councillor Tommy Reilly has exposed a system of institutional laxity, media laziness and ethical failure that stretches far beyond the boundaries of Liscarton, near Navan. At the centre of the controversy is a 35-acre site, purchased for €500,000 in 2016 and placed on the market for €4.2 million a year later after the lands were re-zoned from agricultural to light industrial use in July 2017. Planning permission for development was granted in June 2018 by a Council in which Reilly played a key role. In 2017, the National Transport Authority questioned the rationale of developing enterprise activities at a location so far from Navan town centre with few or no public transport services to the site stating: “The new employment zoning at Liscarton is inappropriate as it is contrary to the planning principles set out in Section 7.1.2 of the Transport Strategy”.
Two of Reilly’s sons, Ciarán and Tomás, are directors of the company that owns the land.
Planning permission was granted in 2018 by Meath County Council in which Reilly played a key role. Two of his sons are directors of the company that owns the land
The complaint that brought the case to the attention of SIPO was not made by a political rival, insider, or whistleblower. It was submitted in March 2022 by Village’s editor, Michael Smith, documenting alleged breaches of the Local Government Act and the Lobbying Act, among other laws, primarily on the back of this article by me: https://villagemagazine.ie/meath-council-investigates-potential-conflict-of-interest-in-major-land-re-zoning/.
The article revealed how Tommy Reilly attended a number of meetings where the re-zoning of the lands at Liscarton was discussed by members and officials of MCC from 2016 was present at a pre-planning meeting with his son Ciaran and participated at meeting when zoning was approved in July 2017. He withdrew from the meeting but did not disclose the reason for his potential conflict of interest.
The NTA questioned the rationale of developing enterprise activities at a location so far from Navan with few public transport services
The complaint to SIPO by Smith alleged, inter alia, that “S 4.5 of the Code of Conduct under the 2001 Act also notes that “The 2001 Local Government Act also provides that where a councillor has actual knowledge that a matter is going to arise at a meeting at which s/he will not be present, but if s/he were, a disclosure would be necessary, then in advance of the meeting s/he must make such disclosure in writing to the Ethics Registrar.
This provision was breached by Councillor Reilly, as he confirmed to Village that he knew about Ciaran Reilly’s interest when he met him in his son’s shop and canteen in advance of the re-zoning in July 2017.
From the beginning, the institutional response has been marked by deflection, minimisation and delay. The SIPO hearing itself was postponed twice, including once following a request by Reilly just before the last local elections. When it finally proceeded in June 2025, media and others were given just four days’ notice, effectively suppressing public awareness. On the first day of the hearing, SIPO unilaterally dropped some of the most serious allegations – including breaches of the Lobbying Act, without consulting the complainant. Smith said “there can be little in life as unrewarding as making a complaint to SIPO”. He said the misery of involving himself in the process was “compounded by the fact that nobody in the media reports accurately what is going on, less still what is at stake”.
Reilly, who served on Meath County Council from 1996 until he lost his seat in 2024, portrayed himself as a victim. He told the Commission on Monday, 16th June, that he had been “tortured” for six years, lost his livelihood, and was attacked on social media by what he called a “certain group of political people”. For the first time in 63 years, he claimed, he was asked not to canvass during an election. Reilly stepped down as a candidate for Fianna Fáil in a 2005 Dáil by-election following a controversy involving a land purchase with Frank Dunlop in 1997. At that time, he said he had been the subject of a witch-hunt by sections of the media.
In his testimony, Reilly insisted he only learned of his son Ciaran’s interest in the land in early July 2017when his son asked him how he would go about making submissions on the development..
He had asked his son “for what?” and Ciaran had told him he had bought land at Liscarton. Mr Reilly senior said he had been shouting about the “cow plot” at Liscarton for years because he wanted it to be put to community use. There had been so many small businesses in Navan operating from the backs of houses and that had become unsafe. He said he replied to his son that he could have nothing to do with the land and to proceed without him. He had taken no action at that stage but when the date of the meeting came he spoke to an official who told him he did not have to leave the council meeting on 19th July 2017 because he had no financial or other interest in that land at Liscarton. That unnamed official was not held to account for that advice.
But he admitted he did not specify the nature of the conflict and failed to update his declaration of interests. “I find it all very confusing”, he said, adding: “My son was involved. I knew that much. Was that not enough?”. The media seemed not to be too concerned whether it was or wasn’t, even though a €3.7m paper profit was in play.
The facts suggest it was not enough. Tommy Reilly attended at least three Council meetings about the rezoning between 2016 and 2017, failing to declare his sons’ interest as required by Section 177 of the Local Government Act. For example, Councillor Reilly was present a special meeting of the Council on 29 May 2017 and was among the 28 Councillors who accepted the Chief Executive’s recommendation to rezone the land, without a vote. He did not disclose any interest in the land. A Council official reminded Councillors of their obligations “under Section 177 of the Local Government Act, 2001 and associated regulations in regard to beneficial interest”.
In March 2018, Reilly attended a pre-planning meeting with his son and engineers from Collins Boyd. Documents submitted with the subsequent planning application listed Tommy Reilly as an applicant, something he said he was “not too happy” to discover, claiming he had “attacked” his son over the error. No-one has got to the bottom of the error which seems a big one. Eamon Collins, principal of Collins Boyd said his staff had included Tommy Reilly’s name as an applicant in error.
Jackie Maguire, Chief Executive of Meath County Council at the time, also testified. Her evidence typified the institutional complacency that allowed this affair to unfold. She maintained that it was merely “unwise” of Reilly to attend the pre-planning meeting. Her colleague, senior planner Paddy Gallagher even strangely told SIPO he could not remember Reilly being at the meeting even though Reilly conceded he had been there. Maguire claimed that no lobbying takes place at such meetings and that they are simply for information-sharing, despite guidance from the local authority website, Lobbying.ie, suggesting otherwise.
Maguire accepted Reilly’s claim that he only learned of his sons’ interest two weeks before the July 2017 vote. The complaint stated that “according to landowners near Liscarton, Councillor Reilly was also involved in erecting the public notice on the land detailing the planning application”. A local vet claimed that his efforts to buy the land were frustrated despite making a higher bid, at one point, than the ultimate purchaser, Royal Active Business Solutions. Ciaran Reilly and another Meath man, Barry Alder were the directors of the company at the time of the sale by local landowner, John Carolan. The land was acquired for £500,000 well above the price for agricultural land in Meath at the time and then offered for sale for €4.2 million or €120,000 per acre, after it was re-zoned and planning permission granted a year later, in June 2018.
At the SIPO hearing, Jackie Maguire, proposed that the system was to blame: “greater training” should be given to Councillors, she said, because the ethics system can be “confusing”. She failed to take responsibility for this failure even though the Council management employs an ethics officer.
In other testimony, Ciaran Reilly said he got involved in the land deal as an investment. He denied that his name was kept off early company filings to obscure the family link. Tomás Reilly, who became a director at his brother’s request, admitted he had no knowledge of the company’s finances, reluctantly declaring he worked for Met Éireann, and could not explain why company records showed it owed him over €15,000.
Despite the seriousness of the allegations and the potential financial gain arising from the rezoning, coverage of the hearings has been scant as with other SIPO cases such as the recent Varadkar debacle https://villagemagazine.ie/murphys-law/. In its report, the Irish Independent wrongly claimed that Maguire had initiated the complaint while The Irish Times and Irish Examiner did not report on the matter at all. RTÉ reported only before the hearings began when there was no content on the specifics of the complaint. At a national level, only the Journal reported on what occurred during the second day of the hearing.
The chair of the Commission, former High Court Judge Garrett Sheehan, said the panel would issue its findings in due course. Whatever its outcome, the Liscarton case has already exposed the deep cracks in Ireland’s ethics enforcement regime. A Councillor can participate in decisions that benefit his family. A Chief Executive can call that behaviour “inadvertent.” A state ethics body can quietly narrow a complaint. And the press can choose to look away.
It is not merely a story of misconduct. It is a study in the failure of systems designed to prevent it.
