Tom Gilmartin

The Man Who Brought Down a Taoiseach and Exposed the Greed and Corruption at the Heart of Irish Politics

Frank Connolly

• Publisher: Gill Books
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9780717160457
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: City Planning & Urban Development
• Index: Politics & International Relations

A successful property developer in England, the Sligo-born Tom Gilmartin had ambitious plans for major retail developments in Dublin in the late 1980s. Little did he know that in order to do business in the city, senior politicians and public officials would want a slice of the action … in the form of large amounts of cash.

Gilmartin blew the whistle on corruption at the heart of government and the city's planning system, and the fallout from his claims ultimately led to the resignation of the Taoiseach Bertie Ahern in 2008.

Written by Ireland's leading investigative journalists, Tom Gilmartin is a compelling narrative of official wrong-doing and abuse of office; it lifts the lid on the corruption and financial mismanagement that blighted Irish society in latter decades of the twentieth century.

The product of two decades' research, it's a must-read for anyone seeking to uncover the roots of Ireland's financial catastrophe.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

PART 1

An emigrant’s return

Chapter 1

THE LONG ROAD FROM LISLARY

Tom Gilmartin’s reluctance to engage with a tribunal—any tribunal—can be seen in a comment he made on hearing of the decision by the Revenue Commissioners in December 1998 to waive any tax demand on the disgraced former Taoiseach Charles Haughey after details of his illegal Ansbacher accounts had emerged in an earlier judicial inquiry. In his typically blunt fashion, Gilmartin said that ‘tribunals are about as useful as tits on a bull.’ The expression, picked up from his early days living on the land in county Sligo, was published, to much amusement, and provoked more questions about the nature and background of this character who had emerged sensationally onto the already crowded set of the tribunal drama.

So who was Tom Gilmartin? And how had this west of Ireland lad become such a significant player in business and property development?

Born in 1935 in Lislary, near Grange, county Sligo, to James and Kathleen Gilmartin (née McDermott), Tom was the first son after three girls, Maudie, Eileen and Patsy; later came Una, James, Julann and Christina. Another child died at birth, while Julann died at six months. James Gilmartin supplemented his income from the thirty-acre farm with his various skills: he made shoes, harnesses for horses, and was a carpenter as well as a champion ploughman. Using expertise he had acquired with explosives during the War of Independence, he also did blasting work for the county council.

Tom Gilmartin was encouraged by his father to work with him on the land. He left school at thirteen, having decided that he was learning nothing there. ‘It was a small national school with one teacher, who chain-smoked and was quite heavy-handed with the stick, to say the least. The only thing I ever saw on the blackboard was Tá mé go maith [I am well] and Sin é an madra [That is the dog]; we never learnt much else. I wanted to learn, but there was nothing. You had to bring a sod of turf every day for the fire. The place was freezing, and there was ice on the floor in winter time, and the teacher would have his arse to the fire all day.’

He got his first job cleaning drains with the county council after altering the age on his birth certificate from thirteen to sixteen. He also helped his father with work on a land reclamation scheme recently introduced by the Government. For a few years the work of clearing scrub and briars, draining and reclaiming land, took up his days. However, he was ambitious for more, and at night he attended the local technical school, despite his father’s opinion that there was little worth in the education there.

Through perseverance, and despite missing years of formal education, he won a scholarship to the agricultural college at Ballyhaise, county Cavan. As the course neared its end he applied for a post with the Department of Agriculture and came first in the civil service examination for the position; however, he was disqualified on the grounds that he had not completed his course, which ended the same week as the exam. His place was awarded to another young man, who had achieved poorer results but who had a well-placed relative in the public service. Several of those who gained places had ended the course at exactly the same time as the young Gilmartin, so it seemed to be a case of ‘who you know and not what you know’ that sealed his future.

Hordes of young people left Ireland for England in the 1950s. It was a reflection of the deep depression throughout the country, and it was only a matter of time before Gilmartin decided to join his many friends from Grange, Cliffoney and other parts of north Sligo who had headed for job-rich Luton, thirty miles from London, where a number of people from his home area had already settled.

‘I was back at home saving hay with my father when I stuck the fork in the ground and I said, “I’ll be in England tomorrow.” He wouldn’t believe me. He didn’t want to believe me, so he called me in the morning to go down at the hay, and I told him, “No, I’m going to England.” And he went mad and he said, “You go to England and you need never come home again.” It might have been different if I was going to America or somewhere, but he never wanted me to go to England.’

It was understandable. James Gilmartin’s past history with the British colonisers was not a happy one. Born in 1898 in Lislary, he joined the Irish Volunteers some time after the Easter Rising in 1916 and became something of a crack shot and an explosives expert. The exploits of Gilmartin and his group of volunteers during the War of Independence were the stuff of local legend. He was captured during what was also known as the ‘Tan’ war, so called after the brutal and infamous Black and Tans, the undisciplined force of irregulars, mostly former British soldiers and convicts recruited to swell the ranks of the Royal Irish Constabulary. He escaped from Cliffoney barracks with the help of an RIC officer.

The search for his group of IRA volunteers, and his subsequent arrest, followed a daring attack on the RIC barracks at Breaghwy, near his home, when another Lislary man, Dominic Hart, scaled the chimney of the high-walled house and descended into a room where the two most senior British officers were sitting down to tea. Local folklore has it that Hart, two revolvers in hand, told the officers to order their men to lay down their weapons and leave the barracks. The officers were not to know that Hart’s weapons were empty; in fact the whole purpose of the raid was to stock up on guns and ammunition, of which there were precious little among the local IRA unit. The column of British troops and RIC men left the barracks, which was promptly seized in one of the more dramatic and less well-known actions by the IRA in county Sligo.

Having joined the anti-Treaty forces after the War of Independence, James Gilmartin was lucky to escape death during the vicious and bitter civil war that tore communities and families apart. He once helped a group of volunteers evade arrest at Lissadell, the ancestral house of the Gore-Booth family and home of Constance Markievicz, by hiding them in the sea with reeds in their mouths to help them breathe. He then returned home to Lislary. Soon afterwards, pro-Treaty forces, led by General Seán Mac Eoin, dragged him out of the house and put him up against the gable wall. His mother, Mary, threw herself in front of her son to prevent him being put to death on the spot. He was taken prisoner and transported to the Curragh prison camp, in county Kildare, for the remainder of the conflict.

Some of his comrades were not so fortunate. In September 1922 the Free State armoured car Ballinalee (named after Mac Eoin’s home town), equipped with a machine gun, was captured by republicans at Rockwood, county Sligo, and was used to mount attacks on government troops. When the pro-Treaty forces launched an operation to retake the armoured car a gun battle took place near Drumcliff. The republicans took to the hills after dismantling the car and the machine gun and were pursued by government troops on the Horseshoe Mountain deep into the slopes of Benbulben. In one of the most infamous episodes of that bitter conflict, six republicans, including Brigadier-General Séamus Devins TD and his adjutant, Commandant Brian MacNeill, son of a government minister, Eoin MacNeill, were captured. After their surrender, troops under the command of Tony Lawlor, a government officer of some notoriety, shot the six: Séamus Devins, Brian MacNeill, Joseph Banks, Patrick Carroll, Thomas Langan and Harry Benson.

Two of the bodies were not found for a fortnight. The bodies of the other victims were removed by an uncle of the future Fianna Fáil ministers Brian Lenihan (senior) and Mary O’Rourke to his mother’s family home at the foot of Benbulben. The uncle, Brian Scanlon, was subsequently forced into exile in Australia because of the assistance he gave the anti-Treaty soldiers. The Free State government claimed that the men were preparing an ambush when they were shot, but republicans in the county said that the six had been shot and savagely bayoneted by soldiers after they had surrendered and had been disarmed.

The killings on Benbulben left a legacy of bitterness in county Sligo that persisted long after the final shots of the Civil War were fired. For James Gilmartin, like many on the defeated anti-Treaty side, the newborn state had been christened with the blood of too many of its young, and the reward for his contribution was a life of hard work on the soil. The victors took the spoils, including the best public-service jobs and positions; the losers returned to the land or faced the emigrant boat.

‘My father never talked to me very much about it,’ Gilmartin said. ‘If you asked him questions he didn’t answer. The six that were shot on the mountain were great friends of his. Martin Brennan was a great friend of ours too. They took him out of the house and shot him up against the wall at Mount Edward. They riddled him with bullets. A lovely fellow who had nothing much to do with anything. My father always believed he was shot for his piece of land.’

James Gilmartin took little interest in politics in later life but fervently supported de Valera and Fianna Fáil, the party joined by many of those who fought on the losing side in the Civil War. The party won power in 1932, thus ending nearly a decade of rule by Cumann na nGaedheal, which was identified with the victorious pro-Treaty forces. De Valera built a mass movement with a promise to develop an independent, self-sufficient economy, support and extend the use of Irish, and finally achieve the long-held objective of a united Ireland, which appealed to many like James Gilmartin.

Tom Gilmartin readily understood his father’s opposition to his decision to emigrate, but was determined on this course. ‘My father never wanted me to go to England. It was the old thing about England; but everybody around us, every able-bodied man, was gone. My mother was heartbroken. She had raised us well, and although there was not much money around we were always turned out in the best of clothes. She was a great cook and we always ate well. She was sorry to see any of us leave. My sister had gone before me, but she died of meningitis at twenty-three. My mother was a highly intelligent woman, and she regretted never having gone to America herself with her sisters. I am very proud of my parents, and my mother in particular. But there was no chance here at that time.’

Although reluctant to see him go, his mother would help him to advance in any way she could, while his father resisted in vain his eldest son’s departure to the land of the old enemy.

Tom Gilmartin took the boat on 27 July 1957. Arriving at Euston Station in London, the fresh-faced young man from county Sligo headed for St Pancras Station and the train to Luton. His first encounter was with a friendly English man from whom he asked directions. ‘I wasn’t quite sure where I was going. So there was this fellow standing on a corner. “Oh, you’ve just arrived,” he says to me. I said I was going to Luton. “Ah, you don’t have to go to Luton. I have a lovely place, and you can stay with me.” I thought, What a lovely fellow to meet after arriving in a strange place! The next thing this woman passed by and she looked at me. She asked if I was lost and then said she assumed I had just come off the train. She kind of moved away from the bloke, and she said to me, “Do you realise what he is?” I said no, and she said he was a homosexual. And I said, “What’s that?” She took a big fit of laughing and said, “You bloody Irish, you’re so innocent.” She pointed out St Pancras Station, which was right beside me.’

After arriving in Luton and a night of searching for digs, with many refusals by landladies who didn’t take Irish tenants, Gilmartin found a bed. A few days later he joined up with the crowd from Grange and found more permanent lodgings with an Irish landlord.

It was boom time for the British economy, with new industrial towns spreading across the Home Counties. His first job was as a conductor on the buses of the United Counties bus company. His next stop was at the Vauxhall car factory in Luton. He was put to sweeping the floors, a job that suited him perfectly, as it meant he could work seven days a week and boost his wages with overtime. After a while he was approached by a manager to help with maintenance on the conveyor system in the manufacturer’s new chromium plant, where the cars were painted. It was not long before his talent for fixing and maintaining complex engineering equipment was noticed and he was encouraged to go on a basic training course on the mechanical handling system, paid by the company. ‘I started working with mechanical handling systems, and they fascinated me. I then joined Simpsons of Round Green, who were building special-purpose machinery as well as overhead runways and conveyors.’

At Simpsons he spent several months working on Britain’s first prototype space rocket. ‘I was the only Irishman among them. They had the rocket ready, and they used to test the engines underground. When they turned on the big engines the whole town used to vibrate.’ The project was eventually closed down by the British government under Harold Wilson. Many of the scientists went to work on the NASA space programme in the United States. ‘America ended up building what the English had pioneered. It was referred to as the brain drain, because all of the scientists and specialists went to America and Germany and other places.

‘I was determined to learn about everything, so I had a chequered employment history, as I never stayed too long with any one company, because I wanted to learn something else. I did structural engineering as well. I had a plan to set up my own company over about two to three years, and I did that. I built it up with any type of engineering or steel jobs I could get. I started on my own, literally on my own.’

As well as expanding his knowledge of specialist engineering work, he took night classes in the local technical school, where he obtained a certificate in welding. He had discovered that he had the eye for precision engineering, as well as mathematical skill and excellent recall.

He also threw himself into improving the social life of the Irish in Luton. His entrepreneurial flair came to the fore in organising events within the thriving Irish community. ‘I knew a lot of Irish people, and I started the Gaelic football in Luton. I set up the Erin’s Hope club and got football pitches. Over seventy thousand Irish arrived in Luton during those few years, and there were some very good footballers from every county. There were a few clubs: St Dymphna’s, the Owen Roe Hurling Club and Erin’s Hope, where I was chairman.’

Chairman in those days was a fancy name for chief fund-raiser and bottle-washer. Tom organised dances and chartered the first aeroplanes from Luton to Dublin for football matches. ‘I suppose I was the equivalent of the first Ryanair, a...