Ireland’s property crash could have been avoided

2006 report exposing Anglo-Irish behaviour was quashed

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Unfinished Anglo Irish Headquarters building, Dublin Docklands

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“Had the report into the Dublin Docklands Development Authority been released in March 2006, as planned, it would have exposed the corporate excesses of Anglo-Irish bank in the docklands and elsewhere”

The then Progressive Democrat (PD) leader and Tánaiste (deputy prime minister), Mary Harney, said that “the idea of some group of citizens setting themselves up with absolutely no justification to the wider public is absolutely sinister and inappropriate.” It was noted that she had no problems with the Irish government accepting up to €1 billion of Chuck Feeney’s monies for health and education projects.
 
Harney’s PD colleague and justice minister, Michael McDowell, raised questions about an allegation that I had visited Colombia using a false Irish passport in 2001. This story first surfaced in the Irish media in 2002 and in early 2003 the Irish police said there was no basis for my prosecution on any charge nor has there been any since.
 
In November 2005, McDowell then took the unprecedented step of using (or abusing) Dáil privilege to denounce me, again, with a series of unsubstantiated claims. These otherwise libelous allegations were made in a written reply to a parliamentary question concerning the CPI. The reply was faxed to a board meeting of Atlantic Philanthropies in New York within minutes of its deposit in the library of Parliament in late November 2005. With this intense official pressure the fate of the CPI was sealed and its funding immediately withdrawn.
 
Just weeks later the members of the CPI board were sent a letter issued by prominent solicitors, Arthur Cox, on behalf of Treasury Holdings which threatened that their family homes would be pursued in damages claims if its clients (Johnny Ronan and Richard Barrett) were written about in any report by the CPI that was libelous or defamatory.
 
The first casualties of the CPI closure were the three researchers the administrator and creditors of the CPI along with myself as executive director. The next casualty was the series of reports into official wrong doing which formed its five year programme of investigation including, of course, “Who Owns Dublin?” the working title of the Docklands report.
 
Other investigations underway included the cause of deaths of detainees in State custody; the inaccurate conclusions of the official tribunal of inquiry into the Stardust tragedy of 1981 when 48 young people died in a Dublin disco fire; the need for Whistleblower protection legislation; an enquiry into lax governance in Irish corporate life; an examination of the monopolisation of the Irish media; and the circumstances surrounding the €30 million purchase (authorised by justice minister McDowell) of a hugely over priced piece of agricultural land in north Dublin for a new top security prison. Several other areas of enquiry by the CPI were also detailed in a comprehensive five year programme endorsed by Atlantic executives in 2004.

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