Wick-lowdown, 2015 - Village Magazine

10 April 2015

HE controversy surround-

ing the acquisition of lands at

Charlesland, near Greystones

in Wicklow by property devel-

opers Sean Mulryan and Sean

Dunne in 2004 continues to haunt the

local authority even since the departure

last month of county manager, Eddie

Sheehy.

Environment minister, Alan Kelly, is

under pressure from junior ﬁnance min-

ister and Wicklow TD, Simon Harris, and

other local representatives to initiate an

inquiry into the relations between the

two prominent developers and senior

council oﬃcials as well as into the con-

tinuing saga of the multi-million-euro

illegal waste dumping scandal in the

garden county.

Among the key features of the

controversy at Charlesland are the cir-

cumstances surrounding the transfer

of valuable rights over council lands

to companies controlled by Dunne and

Mulryan, which provided them with

access to the largely landlocked site

estimated at the time to have a poten-

tial value of €2.5bn.

Over recent months, Village has put

several queries to Wicklow County

Council about a contract signed in July

2003 by Sheehy and Fianna Fáil coun-

cillor, Pat Vance, on the one hand and

by legal representatives for two com-

panies, Brambleglen Ltd and Ballymore

contracting Ltd, Mulryan and Dunne.

The contract provided crucial road

access to the Charlesland site where

the developers had permission to

build almost 1,400 homes along with

shopping and other facilities. Local auc-

tioneer, Gabriel Dooley, who assembled

the lands from the Evans and Tracey

families in the preceding years claims

that Mulryan and Dunne had a special

relationship with the council which

ensured that they were able to acquire

the valuable road access across its lands

at minimum cost.

In reply to a question from Village, the

Council in early April conﬁrmed that it

“exchanged easements with Mr Dunne

and the other parties”.

“There was in fact no disposal of land

to Mr Dunne and the other parties you

referred to in your enquiry. The County

Council exchanged easements with

Mr Dunne and the other parties over

the lands which make up the dual-car-

riageway at Charlesland which are the

subject of the registration mentioned in

your email. This road has facilitated the

subsequent development of lands owned

by IDA (Ireland), Wicklow County Coun-

cil and those developers”, the Council

said.

The statement conﬁrms that the con-

tract agreed in July 2003 and seen by

Village was the instrument used to eﬀect

the exchange of easements. The Coun-

cil did not respond to a question about

the value of the lands in question or why

Councillor Pat Vance was a signature to

the agreement when he did not represent

the Charlesland or Greystones areas. It

stated, however: “All elected members

are authorised to be in attendance at/

witness the aﬃxing of the council seal

on documents”.

Land-registry documents confirm

that the “right of way and other ease-

ments” in favour of Sean Mulryan, Sean

Dunne, Brambleglen Ltd and Ballymore

Contracting Ltd. were transferred on

22nd January 2004.

According to Dooley, the circa 6.5

acres of zoned land in question were

worth in excess of €10m at their 2003

value and provided an additional,

unquantiﬁable, beneﬁt to the develop-

ers who required them to gain access

to much of the Charlesland site. The

exchange was made without any dis-

cussion by the elected members of the

council and without the knowledge of

the Greystones/Delgany area committee

which would have been expected to be

informed about such a major land deal.

It also followed the defeat of a request

by the County management, at a coun-

cil meeting on 12th May, 2003, and

Environment minister must order investigation of why road access given by Council

to Mulryan and Dunne. By Frank Connolly

Alan Kelly is

under pressure

from minister

Simon Harris

and other local

representatives

to initiate an

inquiry into

relations

between the

developers and

senior council

oﬃcials

“

Wick-lowdown, 2015

NEWS Wicklow

Charlesland

April 2015 11

proposed by Councillor Vance, for a

material contravention of the Wicklow

County Development plan to facili-

tate aspects of the Charlesland scheme

which was under construction by Zapi

Ltd, the joint venture formed by Mul-

ryan and Dunne.

After a sometimes heated discus-

sion at the Council, the county manager

failed to get the necessary 18 votes

to agree the material contravention.

At the heart of the discussion was the

concern by councillors of the eﬀect on

Greystones commercial town centre of

a competing retail development at Char-

lesland, the largest residential scheme

in the county. According to the minutes

of the meeting, councillors were also

exercised over the commencement of

works by the developer and there were

calls for some issues to be referred to

the High Court. They rejected a threat

by the county manager to refuse the

entire planning application unless the

members accepted the proposal to con-

travene the development plan.

Almost all the Fianna Fáil and Fine

Gael members of the council supported

the motion but several others includ-

ing then councillors Deirdre De Burca

(Green), Liam Kavanagh, Liz McManus,

both Labour, and Eleanor Roche, wife of

former minister, Dick Roche, abstained.

Independent councillor Tommy Cullen

was the only member to vote against the

motion which fell for lack of support.

Two months earlier, in March 2003,

Dooley was present in Dobbins restau-

rant in Dublin for a meeting lasting

several hours between Mulryan, Dunne

and Vance. At this meeting, he claims

that maps of the proposed scheme and

the road-access routes, and a strategy

for the successful acquisition of the nec-

essary lands, were discussed.

In the July 2003 contract, the council

agreed to acquire whatever additional

lands were needed by the developers by

compulsory purchase order.

Notably, nothing has emerged to

suggest that either Councillor Vance or

Sheehy acted improperly at any time.

When landowners John Nolan and

William Irwin then refused to sell their

lands at Three Trout Stream adjoining

the development to Zapi or to the Council

a compulsory purchase order was signed

in January 2004. Eight days later, the

exchange of easements was registered

to the developers on the nearby council

and IDA lands.

The on-going row over planning

decisions at Wicklow comes at a time

when Mulryan is planning to exit the

National Assets Management Agency

(NAMA) and Dunne is seeking to pro-

tect various assets from the Agency and

from various banks in Ireland and the

US, including lands he has said he owns

with his wife at Greystones.

NAMA is also the subject of a com-

plaint by Dooley to the Garda Bureau

of Fraud Investigation which has been

asked to investigate the manner in which

details of the estate agent’s private

discussions with its oﬃcials and rep-

resentatives of the former Anglo-Irish

Bank were revealed to a senior executive

of Ballymore Properties.

Dooley has claimed that Mulryan is

in breach of an agreement to pay him

€4m in relation to a property venture

at Florentine in Bray in which he was a

partner.

He has further claimed that informa-

tion about this claim which he provided

in conﬁdence to NAMA oﬃcials was

passed on to Ballymore. •

NEWS Wicklow

GABRIEL Dooley has alleged that the

National Assets Management Agency (NAMA)

has breached his conﬁdence by revealing

details of private conversations he had

with his bank to a company controlled by

property developer, Sean Mulryan.

In a detailed statement to the Garda

Bureau of Fraud Investigation seen by

Village

, he has claimed that senior executives

of Anglo Irish Bank (now the IBRC) and

NAMA passed on sensitive commercial

information to a (named) senior executive

of the Ballymore Group in late 2010.

The information concerned a threat by Dooley

to take legal proceedings against Mulryan and

Ballymore over an alleged breach of contract

involving a planned multi-million-euro retail

development in Florentine in Bray town centre.

In 2005, Dooley agreed to sell his 50%

shareholding in Florentine Properties Ltd to his

joint-venture partners, Ballymore, for €5.2m.

A down payment of €1m was paid to Dooley

with the balance of €4m due on completion of

the shopping centre or on the sale of the site.

In 2007, Ballymore agreed to the compulsory

purchase of the Florentine site by Bray

Town Council and the deal was given the

go-ahead by An Bord Pleanála, following

an oral hearing, in February 2009.

However, Dooley has claimed that

Ballymore refused to honour its commitment

to pay the €4m balance he was owed for his

shareholding in Florentine Properties Ltd.

When he informed Anglo that he intended

to pursue Ballymore for the outstanding

monies in early November and December

2010, the information was passed on to

oﬃcials of NAMA based in the London branch

of the bank and from there to Ballymore. At

that time, Ballymore was one of the largest

clients of NAMA with some €2.75bn of its

loans transferred to the ‘bad bank’ agency.

Dooley has provided detailed email

communications to the fraud squad which

established that information about his

planned legal action was passed to Ballymore

and resulted in an angry phone call from

one of its senior executives in Dublin.

“On 8th December 2010 I received a phone

call from …(a named executive) of Ballymore

stating that he had received a call and an email

regarding the €4m due to me. He was furious

on the phone as I had showed an intention to

issue proceedings against Ballymore……(He)

stated to me that Ballymore always regarded

me as a long-standing close friend of Ballymore

Group going back many years. No one else

was aware of my plan to sue Ballymore except

myself, the Anglo people and my legal team.

There is no reason at this time that Ballymore

should have been aware of this highly sensitive

information”, Dooley said in the statement

made to the fraud squad on 15th January last.

In January 2011, he refused an oﬀer

of a six-ﬁgure sum from Ballymore

to settle the outstanding debt.

He said that the breach of conﬁdentiality led

to a breakdown in trust with his bank, Anglo,

which appointed a receiver over his property

portfolio and had a devastating eﬀect on his

“private auctioneering business..my wife and

my ﬁve children”, according to the statement.

The fraud squad has already taken criminal

proceedings against another former oﬃcial

of NAMA, Enda Farrell, who is accused of

wrongly disclosing conﬁdential information

from the agency. The case is expected

to continue into early next year. •

Frank Connolly

Dooley and NAMA