Analysis: The ugly truth behind the Celtic Tiger mask

‘LIFFEY Valley Shopping Centre is one of Ireland’s leading shopping destinations,” boasts the corporate blurb on the West Dublin shopping centre’s website.

But recently this squat, functional retail park has become more famous for the dodgy planning decisions that led to its development.

The story of Liffey Valley is the tale of Irish corruption in microcosm. In the late 1980s, a Sligo-born developer based in the UK, Tom Gilmartin, wanted to build a shopping centre on the site, then known as Quarryvale. Initial attempts to gain planning permission were unsuccessful. Then, between 1991 and 1993, Dublin city councillors had a change of heart. The site was redesignated as a commercial land, with permission granted for a shopping centre. By 1998, Liffey Valley was open for business.

The motivation behind the councillors’ volte face is laid bare in last week’s report from the Mahon Tribunal, which found that property developer Owen O’Callaghan and lobbyist Frank Dunlop paid councillors substantial sums of money to ensure support for the rezoning.

Quarryvale is a prime example of the “endemic and systemic” corruption referred to by Mahon. And it was not confined to councillors.

Gilmartin has claimed that, in February 1989, he was brought to Leinster House, where he was introduced to the then Taoiseach Charles Haughey, his two successors, Albert Reynolds and Bertie Ahern, as well as other Fianna Fail luminaries.

Corruption in Irish political life has been under the spotlight before, most notably in the McCracken and Moriarty tribunals, but the Mahon report has proved the most devastating. The tribunal accused Mr Ahern of lying about financial transactions that took place during the 1990s, including unreported loans totalling hundreds of thousands of punts. The report also implicated other leading Fianna Fail apparatchiks.

Mr Ahern has reacted with feigned incredulity. In an article in yesterday’s Sunday Independent, he described the report as “unfair”, hinting he may challenge its findings. In the same piece, he resigned from Fianna Fail – just days before the party was due to debate a motion to expel him for “betrayal of trust”.

In power, Bertie was known as the “Teflon Taoiseach” – despite a swirl of rumour and innuendo, nothing ever stuck to him. He delivered Fianna Fail a succession of election victories and nurtured the Celtic Tiger from pup to its savage maturity.

The Mahon report has demonstrated what everyone in Ireland knew for years: corruption was rife in Irish politics. What’s needed now is root and branch reform of the system that produced Mr Ahern. It’s the least the residents of Liffey Valley and the myriad landscapes of corruption that pockmark Ireland deserve.