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Ireland's political and cultural magazine
8 March 2015
NEWS
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Gerard Convie 11
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Memos to New Left Government 14
Irish tax 18
Áras Attracta 20
Wicklow manager retires
But allegations of planning malpractice require answers. By Frank Connolly
controversial High Court outing when
the Council sought to have companies
involved in widespread illegal dump-
ing pay for the remediation of polluted
landfills in west Wicklow. The court
action was suspended in late 2011 after
it heard evidence that the Council itself
was involved in illegal dumping of waste
at the huge Whitestown dump, while one
of its authorised officers had sought to
obtain the contract to remediate the
site and reap millions in profit from the
clean-up.
Sheehy departs at a time when the Min-
ister for the Environment, Alan Kelly, is
considering various other allegations of
maladministration in local government
in the county and what form of inquiry
is required to deal with them. Just days
after Sheehy announced his decision to
retire, rather than apply for an extension
to his term as manager, a detailed set of
questions and complaints concerning his
T
HE retirement of Wicklow County
manager, Eddie Sheehy, has
focused attention on the con-
troversial legacy which his, yet to be
announced, successor will inherit. Over
the 14 years that he has been at the helm,
the Council has been embroiled in a suc-
cession of embarrassing episodes and
legal actions, from the illegal dumping
of waste to planning and re-zoning dis-
putes involving some of the country’s
wealthiest developers.
Sheehy featured in the national news-
papers a few years ago after they exposed
a holiday junket by current and former
Council staff to Florida in which he
was photographed with a fistful of dol-
lars. He was at the losing end of a High
Court action taken by three Councillors
whom he wrongly barred from the Coun-
cil chamber after they lost a defamation
action against the County manager.
He also figured in another
involvement in property developments
in Bray and Greystones was submitted to
the minister by prominent Wicklow auc-
tioneer, Gabriel Dooley.
The 44 questions submitted by Dooley
centre on the manner in which two of
Ireland’s leading developers, Sean Mul-
ryan and Sean Dunne, acquired Council
lands and way-leaves to gain road access
to a major residential and retail scheme
at Charlesland near Greystones in the
early 2000s. Dooley had already helped
assemble the mainly landlocked private
properties at Charlesland, and was a
partner with Mulryan in the Florentine
development in Bray town centre before
they fell out over an outstanding €4m
debt which the auctioneer claims he is
owed by the developer.
He claims that the Council did eve-
rything it could to facilitate Zapi, the
joint-venture company formed by Mul-
ryan and Dunne to develop Charlesland,
and that he was present when prominent
Fianna Fáil Councillor, Pat Vance, dis-
cussed maps and plans for the scheme
with the developers over a meal in Dob-
bins restaurant in March 2003. Vance is
the long-time chairman of the planning
committee of the Council.
Central to Dooley’s complaints are the
manner in which the Council acquired
lands under compulsory purchase
orders (CPO) to provide access to Char-
lesland from the N11 motorway, the
main route from Dublin to the south-
east. He has asked the minister whether
he is satisfied with the manner in which
the Greystones Southern Access route
(SAR) and the Killpedder Interchange on
the N11 were financed and what monies
Proposed scheme for
Florentine site, Bray
March 2015 9
the developers contributed for the roads,
for a roundabout at Charlesland, and for
other services provided for the scheme.
Dooley has also claimed that lands at
Three Trouts Stream were compulso-
rily purchased to benefit the developers
rather than for social housing as senior
Council officials have always insisted.
He has also questioned why a contract
signed with senior Council officials and
signed by Councillor Vance and Eddie
Sheehy was made with two companies,
Brambleglen and Ballymore Contract-
ing, rather than with Zapi which had
obtained the planning permission for
the Charlesland scheme. In the con-
tract, the Council undertakes to obtain,
under CPO, any lands required by the
developers for roads or to meet other
requirements.
There are also outstanding issues over
planning and other levies that have yet to
be resolved between Zapi and the Coun-
cil and a sensitive issue as to whether
compliance certificates were provided
by the Council to allow the homes to be
sold before all of the required levies were
paid by the company.
Dooley’s bitter antagonism to Mul-
ryan centres on an arrangement which
the pair agreed, to buy and develop the
Florentine site in Bray town centre,
where Dooley has one of his auctioneer-
ing offices. Between 1996 and 2002 he
assembled the properties of dozens of
landowners for Mulryan’s vehicle the
Ballymore Group, on which they planned
to build a major retail centre. They
formed a consortium, Florentine Prop-
erties Ltd., with Ballymore and Dooley
each holding 50% of the shares, and
negotiated a loan from Bank of Scotland
The 44
questions
submitted by
Dooley centre
on the manner
in which two
of Ireland’s
leading
developers,
Sean Mulryan
and Sean
Dunne,
acquired
Council lands
and way-
leaves to gain
road access
to a major
residential and
retail scheme
at Charlesland
“
which took the title deeds from all of
Dooley’s commercial assets as security.
In June 2005, Ballymore acquired Doo-
ley’s shareholding for €5m with a down
payment of €1m and the balance to be
paid when the 100,000 sq ft shopping
centre and 85 apartments were com-
pleted, or on the sale of the site.
In 2007, Wicklow County Coun-
cil placed a CPO on the site which was
completed in 2009. By this time, some
€2.75bn of distressed Ballymore loans
from a range of institutions including
Anglo Irish Bank, Irish Nationwide,
Allied Irish Banks and the Bank of
Ireland were in the National Assets Man-
agement Agency (NAMA).
In November and December 2010,
Dooley met officials of Anglo, which han-
dled his personal investments, to discuss
his plan to take legal action against Bal-
lymore to recover the €4m debt. He
claims that details of these confidential
discussions were passed on to NAMA
and thence by officials of that ‘bad bank’
to Ballymore. None of Dooley’s assets
or loans were in NAMA and he had no
business with the agency. Following
this unauthorised disclosure, which he
confirmed by obtaining e mails from
the bank under Data Protection legisla-
tion, Ballymore approached Dooley and
offered him a six figure sum to settle the
outstanding debt, an offer he promptly
refused.
In a meeting in the Berkeley Court
Hotel in May 2012 Mulryan offered
Dooley a sum of €75,000 in settlement
of the dispute, which he refused. Accord-
ing to Dooley, Mulryan warned him that
if FPL was put into receivership then he
would get nothing, as specified in the
2005 contract.
“I told them that I had spent 18 years
of my life helping them with the Charle-
sland and Florentine developments and
that I’d rather starve than accept what
I considered was an insult. They later
came back with an offer of €500,000
which I also rejected”, he said.
Six months later, the land was placed
in receivership in a manner which Dooley
claims was designed to ensure that the
monies owed to him would not be paid.
When receivers Grant Thornton took
control of the site, Mulryan argued that
he no longer owed the €4m as he had not
developed or sold the land, which was
required by the contract.
Following this breakdown in trust
with the bank, Anglo appointed receivers
over Dooley’s property portfolio which,
he said, had a devastating effect on his
auctioneering business and family.
Almost five years later, Dooley’s auc-
tioneering business is back on track with
the uplift in the property market and he
remains determined to get the monies
he is due from Ballymore. He has also
claimed that the Council facilitated the
re-zoning of Ballymore lands at Charles-
land in September 2013 which increased
their value from €80,000 to €1.2m an
acre, a deal which, he claims, provides
further evidence of the special treatment
Mulryan and Dunne have received from
the Council and its senior officials over
the past decade and more.
In 2003, the two developers envisaged
a massive retail scheme at Charlesland
which, with the help of a new road link to
the N11, would attract customers from
counties to the west and south east but
this was refused by An Bord Pleanála
Dooley at Three
Trouts Stream
Charlesland
10 March 2015
NEWS WICKLOW
following successful objections from
traders in Greystones. The 1,400 houses
and apartments they built at Charles-
land yielded a significant profit for the
pair of high-rollers but other plans for
undeveloped sections of the lands they
control were put on hold following the
property and financial crash. Dunne,
of course, is entangled in his battle
against NAMA and other banks, in Ire-
land and the US, although he has claimed
in papers submitted to the US court that
he and his wife still control two sites at
Charlesland.
Mulryan is hoping to emerge
unscathed from NAMA following the
turnaround in his fortunes from his UK
and Europe-wide investments. He now
wants to develop some 400 expensive
homes at Charlesland on the 20 acres
re-zoned by the Council. However, the
continuing efforts by Dooley to recover
his €4m, and possibly other damages
and losses, could pose complications
for Mulryan, as he rebuilds his prop-
erty empire in Ireland and Britain. The
developer has a long history of dealings
with Wicklow County Council, including
with another former county manager,
Blaise Treacy, who went on to work as
a consultant for Mulryan following his
retirement. It remains to be seen what
Eddie Sheehy will do with his spare time
as his two seven-year terms as head of
the Wicklow local authority come to a
close. •
Auctioneer
Dooley
claimed that
the Council
facilitated
the re-zoning
of Ballymore
lands at
Charlesland
which
increased their
value from
€80,000 to
€1.2m an acre,
a deal which,
he claims,
provides
further
evidence of
the special
treatment
Mulryan and
Dunne have
received from
the Council
“
EDDIE Sheehy has endured much
controversy during his two seven-
year terms as Wicklow County
manager. The most tragic episode
of those years was undoubtedly
the 2007 deaths of two fire-
fighters, Brian Murray (46) and
Mark O’Shaughnessy (26), as
they fought a blaze at a disused
factory in Bray, after which the Council was fined
some €500,000 after pleading guilty to
breaches of health and safety legislation.
An unapologetic Sheehy last week told the
local East Coast radio station that the Council
did not contribute to the deaths of the two
men whom he claimed had disobeyed orders
in their handling of the blaze. Previously,
the offices of the Council were raided by
gardaí investigating the deaths and Sheehy
was questioned in Bray Garda station.
In 2007, he bore the brunt of criticism by
High Court judge Mary Laffoy who described
the removal by Sheehy of three elected
Councillors from office as “an absurdity.”
The three Councillors, Pat Doran, Nicky
Kelly and Tommy Cullen were reinstated to
their positions following the court ruling.
Sheehy and former County manager,
Blaise Treacy, featured in national and
local news reports about expenses
they incurred on junkets to the US,
Germany and Portugal among other
locations, as members of the board of the non-
profit Wicklow Enterprise Board during which more
than €300,000 of public money was expended.
He also lost a High Court action in February 2009
when it ruled that an ethics inquiry in which he
participated into allegations by former Green Party
Councillor, Deirdre de Burca, against a former Fianna
Fáil Councillor and solicitor, Fachtna Whittle, had not
adequately dealt with the complaints in its final report.
The Ethics Committee report found that the complaints
were unjustified and cleared Whittle. An appeal of the
decision by Sheehy to the Supreme Court is in train.
In recent weeks, a major data centre project for the
Apple corporation, and supported by the IDA, which had
been proposed for Wicklow by local businessman, Brian
McDonagh, on a site in Newtownmountkennedy, instead
went to Athenry, County Galway; and Councillors have
blamed management for failing to deliver it for the County.
During his terms in office the County has lost major
employers including Arklow Pottery,
Scheering Plough in Rathdrum and Dell in
Bray, without any significant replacement of
industrial jobs. Last week, it emerged that
the Council had been fined some €70,000 in
2013 by the roads division of the Department
of Transport in relation to improper
procurement procedures involving the
purchase of bitumen and materials/plant hire.
Meanwhile, the illegal waste saga trundles
on with a dispute over the quality of the
remediation of the massive Whitestown
landfill in west Wicklow between its
owners, Brownfield and the Council.
Sheehy could have asked for a three-
year extension to his tenure until he
reaches normal retirement age but this
would have required a decision by the
minister who is currently sitting on a file of
complaints made by Dooley, Brownfield and
others into the controversies surrounding
the Council and its former manager.
In late September, Kelly’s private secretary, Larry
Kelly, told three Wicklow Councillors that a file of
allegations they had delivered to the department was
removed overnight from the minister’s desk, much
to his annoyance, although the culprits have never
been identified. Sheehy can now leave all this behind
as he heads to the Wicklow hills with a lump sum of
€300,000 and a pension of €75,000 per year. •
By Frank Connolly
Eddie Sheehy’s legacy
Lost legal actions, industrial decline and allegations of planning malpractice, and a €300k lump sum
Minister Alan’s
Kelly’s private
secretary
says a file of
allegations
was removed
overnight from
the minister’s
desk, although
the culprits
have never
been identified
“
