PB February-March 2026
February-March 2026 17
The eulogies versus the evidence: how the long-term County
Manager left Donegal mired in cronyism, suppressed
whistleblowing, and a planning culture still unreformed
By Michael Smith
Donegal’s former County
Manager passed for a grandee
in the county.
Taoiseach Micheål Martin announced in
December: “I am deeply saddened at the
passing of Michael McLoone. An outstanding
public servant who excelled in so many
dierent roles. It was my privilege to know
Michael and witness his dedication to his
county and country. He was a towering figure
of Donegal GAA. My thoughts are with his
family”.
Unique ecentralisation model
Donegal County Council said it was “deeply
saddened to learn of the passing of former
County Manager, Michael McLoone, who
served from 1994 until his retirement in 2010.
He was a dedicated and passionate leader who
made a lasting impact on our county. While
many important capital projects were delivered
during his tenure with the Council, he will most
notably be remembered for a remarkable
transformation in local government in the
county with the decentralisation of oces”.
The Council failed to mention the serious
financial scandal under McLoone’s command
when, as confirmed by the internal auditor,
he gifted his associate a multi-million-euro
consultancy over that decentralisation,
without following tendering procedures,
without a...contract, but with a blank cheque,
simply because, as he publicly stated, he
wanted the project to be his lasting, and
transferrable, legacy. No other local authority,
which responded to a survey, adopted the
McLoone model despite his outrageous claims
to the members of the County Council. And
the oce block in Milford he claimed to have
‘decentralised’ has become the call centre for
the Council. Neither did the Council mention
what McLoone cost the people of Donegal in
High Court judgments.
Ubiquitous State chairman
McLoone ultimately became Chairman of B&B
Ireland, the Blood Transfusion Board, Donegal
Airport and the Prison Service group, The
ultimate rural insider well-got in Dublin, he
served on the board of Enterprise Ireland and
became CEO of the city’s Beaumont Hospital.
Facilitator of planning anarchy
Still, Michael McLoone’s real legacy, from his
time as County Manager, is Donegal’s planning
system, one that became synonymous with
intimidation, opaque decisions, conflicts
of interest, manipulated inquiries, and
institutionalised evasion of oversight. But
above all with unsustainable car-borne sprawl
The Manager who broke
Donegal’s planning system
and relentless one-o housing undermining
the wild integrity of what was once probably
the State’s once most-beautiful county. The
patterns established during his 16 years as
County Manager still define Donegal’s failures
today.
Donegal’s planning system is warped by
pressure, alteration, and intimidation.
More than 20 years ago Gerard Convie,
senior planner in the County Council, laid out
a detailed account of how decision-making
worked under McLoone. It was not based on
the County Development Plan or statutory
criteria but on pressure from associates and
friends of the Manager, intimidation of dutiful
employees and elevation of lackeys. He
described an environment in which planners
who applied the law impartially faced hostility,
undermining, and retaliatory treatment. He
referred to “bullying and intimidation” of
OBITCHUARY: Michael McLoone who broke
Donegal’s planning and ethics systems
NEWS
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those who refused to bend, and planning
decisions that appeared to have been altered
after ocial recommendations had been
made. This included refusal recommendations
softened or replaced, conditions removed
without explanation, and inconsistencies
that almost always favoured well-connected
applicants. McLoone wanted Convie out and
was supported by senior figures in government
including Noel Dempsey, one of McLoone’s
notable eulogisers on his passing. Convie
resigned from the Council.
Convie’s initial list of 20 suspect cases
expanded dramatically; he later characterised
the full set of irregularities as “hundreds…a
cesspit”.
Convie’s High Court vindication
damned McLoone.
A 2013 High Court judgment, which found
that the Department had failed to vindicate
his good name and awarded him damages,
implicitly confirmed that his allegations had
been mishandled and unjustly dismissed. He
would later win two further High Court cases
in 2021 concerning more recent complaints.
The State repeatedly failed to meet even basic
standards of fairness in its treatment of him,
yet the underlying practical and ethical issues
he highlighted remain unexamined.
The case against McLoone
Central to the dossier was McLoone, the
County Manager and ringmaster, alleged to
have intervened to favour friends and political
figures, notably by allowing his friends to
operate an unauthorised and hazardous filling
station on the National Primary Road near his
home town of Ballyshannon for years against
lawful council policy, road safety and public
health objections and even objections from
the then RUC in the north.
Among a raft of serious irregularities in the
administration of planning in Donegal County
Council, Convie accused Jim Harley, a former
senior council ocial championed by McLoone
and who later became a planning consultant,
of, inter alia, improperly influencing appeals
and zoning decisions, including a Dungloe
shopping centre with the help of the current
CEO of the county council, John McLaughlin,
and high-amenity lands at Malin Head
benefiting family members and his friends.
Under McLoone’s tutelage, Noel McGinley,
a Fianna Fáil councillor, allegedly secured
permission for a major high-rise retail
and housing development in Letterkenny
contrary to the County Development Plan.
Bernard McGuinness, a late Fine Gael
councillor, obtained permission for a housing
development outside Culda’s development
limit, following internal pressure and later
boundary changes. A junior planning assistant
quit her job following her bullying treatment
concerning the McGuinness proposal.
A more recent and on-going serious
infringement of the planning code which aptly
demonstrates the McLoone school of planning
decision-making, is the granting of permission
for a huge multi-million-euro holiday and
holiday home complex outside Carrigart for
Mick McGinley and his son, famous golfer Paul
McGinley, within and adjacent to a designated
Special Area of Conservation, [SAC.] The
decision demonstrates the length to which
McLoone would go to secure permission for
his former County team-mate and his son.
Among the most striking elements of
the record is the documentary evidence
of prohibited communications between
Donegal County Council, [on the instructions
of McLoone, — through Assistant County
Manager Liam Kelly] — and An Bord Pleanála
Secretary Diarmuid Collins regarding a third-
party planning appeal involving land in
which Convie had a declared interest. Such
communications were, even at the time,
understood to be potentially unlawful.
An Bord Pleanála later confirmed to Convie
that such discussions “may be unlawful”.
Manipulating the Ministerial
inquiry: how the truth was
buried
When Minister John Gormley attempted
to initiate a Section 255 investigation into
Donegal’s planning system—a move that
could have removed planning functions
from the Council — it triggered determined
resistance within his own Department and, of
course, from McLoone who, in an angry retort,
berated the Minister for daring to question
him. David (Dave) Walsh, then a senior ocial
and later Chair of An Bord Pleanála, led the
internal campaign to prevent the inquiry. He
argued such an investigation would alienate
local authorities, be too expensive, and take
too long.
Walsh then produced a report for the
Minister that was riddled with inaccuracies
and omissions. He claimed wrongly that
Convie had not declared his interest in the
site at issue. Walsh never contacted Convie for
clarification, despite being invited to do so.
The resulting 2012 report, laid before
the Dáil, dismissed Convie’s allegations as
“vexatious” and “manufactured”. It relied
heavily on responses from McLoone and his
successor, Seamus Neely who repeated the
mantras of McLoone that Convie must be
ignored, the same advice which Neely gave to
incoming chairs of the County Council. When
Convie challenged the 2012 report in the
High Court, the State settled. The report was
discredited insofar as it related to Donegal,
and the Government apologised and awarded
Convie substantial damages.
The episode shows how Donegal’s planning
issues were not merely ignored but actively
distorted within ocial channels to prevent
scrutiny.
McLoone pretends to sue
When this was all written up for Village,
McLoone, using Michael McDowell as senior
counsel for what was spurious Strategic
Litigation Against Public Participation (SLAPP),
sued Village and its editor for defamation but,
like so many, he never followed up.
Since the débacle in the High Court and
the Mulcahy report fiasco, Gerard Convie
has brought five successful High Court cases
regarding the administration of planning in
Donegal County Council; in the process, he
has been vindicated and paid substantial
damages and his costs.
Promotions that insulated the
system from accountability
The pattern of promotions under McLoone
reveals how management decisions
entrenched, rather than corrected, the
problems within planning. Eunan Quinn,
who had failed to secure a promotion for a
junior position in planning through the Local
Appointments Commission, was swiftly
rewarded and elevated by McLoone through
a series of increasingly senior planning
posts, eventually becoming acting director
of planning. This occurred despite Quinn’s
involvement in assembling material against
Convie during attempts to remove him.
Similarly, Jim Harley, who replaced Convie,
rose through the ranks despite evidence
presented in the High Court concerning serious
irregularities in his involvement in planning
decisions. Court adavits asserted that
McLoone needed Harley in position to ensure
the decisions “desired by McLoone” such as
the McGinley scheme, would be issued,
Unexamined conflicts of
interest: the Quinn case
The handling of complaints involving Quinn
and his wife, Aideen, in particular the dodgy
circumstances of their planning permission for
a house outside Letterkenny, and their failure
to comply with the planning conditions of the
Crucially… Dave Walsh
misinformed the Minister
on many key issues
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said permission which is a criminal oence,
demonstrates the degree to which Donegal’s
planning administration had ceased to operate
according to professional norms.
Aideen, who had left the Council as an
assistant planner, continued to act, under
the radar, as a planning consultant, preparing
applications for agents who regularly worked
with her husband. Her involvement should
have been declared by Quinn under ethics
legislation. He did not declare it. The conflict
was obvious, documented, and serious. Yet
when the evidence was presented to McLoone
and Neely, they failed to act. SIPOC, similarly,
demurred though its decision is being
challenged in the High Court. The Minister
declined to intervene.
Even more striking, Aideen was later re-
employed within the Council’s planning
section, without disclosing her prior
consultancy work. Complaints, fully
documented, concerning the Quinns, to the
current CEO of the County Council were not
even acknowledged.
The Mulcahy Report: nine
years of suppression
After the High Court discredited the earlier
review, former senior counsel Rory Mulcahy,
now a High Court Judge, was appointed to
examine Convie’s allegations. His report
was completed in 2017. It has never been
published.
Serial Ministers for Housing and Planning
have implausibly claimed to be too busy to
read it, to be considering it, or to be planning
to bring it to Cabinet “in due course”.
The contrast with the Paul Hyde scandal at
An Bord Pleanála — where the Farrell Report
was forwarded to the Garda — is stark. When
wrongdoing implicates faraway wee Donegal,
the documentation vanishes into ministerial
drawers. The political sensitivity lies in what
the report probably contains: confirmation
that governance under McLoone was not
merely flawed but systemically compromised.
A system still failing: the
legacy playing out in real time
Donegal’s current planning failures
directly reflect the practices and personnel
embedded during McLoone’s tenure.
According to the Planning Regulator,
Donegal County Council grants 95% of all
planning applications. Given that the vast
majority of planning applications are for one-
o rural houses in what is arguably Ireland’s
most scenic county, the figure is astounding.
However, the rate of permission is called out
when almost 50% of the Council’s decisions
to grant are reversed by An Bord Pleanala
[now an Coimisiún Pleanála] compared with
the national average of only 27%.
unauthorised development; e.g. a complaint
to the Ombudsman claimed that DCC had
permitted development on top of an ancient
graveyard situated along the iconic Knockalla
Drive on the Fanad Peninsula, which, under
the County Development Plan, is protected.
DCC told the Ombudsman that no such
graveyard existed. The Ombudsman
embarrassingly, for it, accepted the word
of DCC.
Conclusion: the Manager who
spawned a report so damning
it could not, until now, be
published
Donegal remains one of Ireland’s most
poorly governed planning environments.
Embarrassingly, LAMA, the timeserving local
authority managers association, has recently
awarded Donegal County Council ‘’Council
of the Year’’ Award and the Council has
presented every existing and past employee
with a commemorative coin in recognition of
“the dedication and hard work of sta”.
Without the publication of the Mulcahy
Report, without a statutory inquiry into
planning under McLoone’s stewardship,
and without accountability for those who
manipulated oversight processes, Donegal
will remain trapped in a cycle of dysfunction
leading to poor quality of life for its citizens.
Publish the report, Minister James
Browne.
It was my privilege
to know Michael and
witness his dedication to
his county and country
Taoiseach Micheál Martin
Over 1,400 unauthorised developments
were recorded between 2019 and 2023, an
astonishing level of non-compliance indicating
the collapse of enforcement as a meaningful
function.
The unauthorised Letterkenny night club
is emblematic: five bars, three DJs, hundreds
of patrons, and no planning permission for
its use as a night club. Complaints were
submitted repeatedly; internal works were
granted permission despite the absence of
proper applications; the premises opened
regardless. A Fire Safety Certificate was issued
while no planning permission existed. Appeals
and objections were ignored. The Council,
even when confronted with explicit illegality,
including the non-compliance with conditions
imposed by An Bord Pleanála, declined to act.
This wasn’t the first time that DCC lied to
the Ombudsman regarding complaints of
Shifty evasiveness on corruption report from then–Minister, Eoghan Murphy
– and every minister since up to James Browne now
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