[QUOTE=“Sandymount Red, post: 1004332, member: 1074”]@Fagan ODowd
Albert was a key player on the sleaziest political team ever assembled. Haughey, Burke , Ahern, Lawlor et al. Was he ever embroiled in any scandals or were there any rumours about him?[/QUOTE]
I suppose the one he couldn’t shake off was that he was too close to Larry Goodman in the context of the Beef Tribunal.
And his daughters picked up two flats handy enough in the Mespil Flats scandal. So he was no angel.
Good man Fagan. Here’s some seedy detail. From
http://thestory.ie/2009/12/23/michael-fingleton-inbs-and-mespil/
Prime Time Investigates did a special into the banking and lending industry in Ireland the other night, and highlighted previously undisclosed 100% fast track loans given to politicians, including former Finance Minister Charle McCreevy.
Nothing of the programme was really surprising, but it did add extra details to the dealings of Michael Fingleton, a man with a coloured history, as I blogged about back in April.
Part of the reasons none of the details were the surprising is because there is prior form. Irish Nationwide have been giving special loans to special people for a very long time. If you cast your mind back to the Mespil Homes deal in the early 1990s, you see the same pattern.
So who else did Irish Nationwide (Michael Fingleton being one in the same, as Primetime demonstrated) provide loans for? Let’s look again at Mespil, as I blogged back in April:
The current editor of the Irish Times, Geraldine Kennedy, then a reporter, wrote a story in May 1993 that Michael Fingleton got a mortgage from Irish Nationwide, the society he was managing director of, towards the purchase of a 1-bedroom flat in the Mespil Estate. In all, Mr Fingleton bought four apartments. with one mortgaged from the society.
But Mr Fingleton was not the only one to buy apartments in the estate, and not the only one to get a mortgage from Irish Nationwide. Solicitor Andrew O’Rourke bought two apartments in trust for two daughters of then Fianna Fail taoiseach Albert Reynolds, Emer and Leonie.
100% mortgages were advanced to 51 customers to buy 93 apartments. These included the thenAttorney General Harry Whelehan, broadcaster Marian Finucane, AIB’s Anthony Spollen, former publican Dessie Hynes and the then Comptroller and Auditor General Patrick McDonnell.
Of course Mr Fingleton had not declared the purchased of the apartment, as he was obliged to do under the Building Societies Act. He later corrected the record. The following year, further details emerged. Central Bank filings in 1994 showed that seven loans totalling £342,000 were made to people and a company connected with society chairman Peter O’Connor. Five loans totalling £163,000 were made to people connected to director John Murphy.
Four loans with a total value of £125,500 were made to people connected to Mr Fingleton, including the £110,000 loan to himself. Three loans were advanced to Peter O’Connor, son of the chairman. Mr Fingleton’s brother also took out loans.
As long ago as 1994, Mr Fingleton’s salary, then an enormous £249,000 a year, was questioned by shareholders.
In 1999, Mr Fingleton was threatened with imprisonment by a High Court judge over the employment and treatment of a branch manager in Cavan town.
All very interesting. But how does it relate back to our current questions?
Fast forward to 2000, and the Flood Tribunal is in full swing. On April 19, 2000, Frank Dunlop stopped stonewalling and after reflecting overnight, said he had participated in wholescale corruption. I myself was at the Flood Tribunal that day.
Someone else was giving evidence that day though, Michael Fingleton.
Sounds familiar doesn’t it? In 2000 Mark Keenan wrote an analysis of the Mespil deal for the Sunday Tribune. He looked at it from the angle of the tenants of the apartments, elderly people who had their rented homes essentially sold from under their feet. But let’s look at it again in light of the Primetime programme.
100% mortgages in 1993? I can’t imagine this being very common practice. Also look at the profiles of the people who not only got 100% mortgages, but also got the apartments at apparent knockdown prices, courtesy of New City Estates via Irish Life. Let’s take another, closer, look. And please remember, at the timethe State had a 30% stake in Irish Life.
In Apil 1992 The Irish Times reported that Irish Life was considering selling one of the 12 Mespil Apartment blocks.
“Irish Life is to sell one of the 12 apartment blocks at the Mespil Estate beside the Burlington Hotel in Dublin 4, and is to decide later this year whether to put more of the complex up for sale. There are 299 apartments rented out to tenants in Mespil, the largest privately-owned rental complex in the country.
If Irish Life eventually decides to sell the entire complex, it will represent the most important residential property disposal in Dublin for many years, on account of the number of units involved and their prime Dublin 4 location.”
The following year, in March 1993, The Irish Times reported:
“The company which bought one of the apartment blocks in the Mespil Estate in Dublin 4 from Irish Life last year is putting the 16 apartments in it up for sale individually next week – the first time that flats in the complex have gone on sale publicly.
Up until last year, Mespil was owned by Irish Life, which rented out the 299 apartments to tenants. Irish Life sold the entire complex last autum to a group of investors.
Only one of the 12 apartment blocks was sold by Irish Life with full vacant possession. This block, located nearted the Burlington Hotel at the front of the seven-acre complex, was bought by Maypole Properties, which has since been upgrading the 16 flats in it for eventual sale.
Jill O’Neill in selling agents Sherry FitzGerald, says the eight one-bedroom units, with floor areas ranging from 445 square feet to 480 square feet, will cost from £52,500. There will be four two-bedroom apartments, each with approximately 550 square feet of accommodation and costing from £64,500. There are also four three-bedroom units, with floor areas of about 685 square feet and costing from £74,500.”
In May 1993 it turned out that First National Building Society funded the purchase by New City Estates of the apartment block. But it’s then managing director, Joe Treacy, bought six of the apartments from New City Estates once they went on the open market. 50 of the investors received mortgages from the First National, but Mr Treacy did not use a First National loan, instead using Ulster Bank.
By May 8, 1993, Geraldine Kennedy wrote a story detailing who exactly had benefitted from the Mespil/New City Estates deal.
[INDENT]“The Minister for Finance, Mr Ahern, is being asked to investigate the circumstances in which the 299 flats in the Mespil Estate in Dublin 4 were sold privately by Irish Life Assurance plc to a group of investors which includes a number of well-known persons in political, legal and business circles.
Two of the Taoiseach’s daughters, Emer and Leoinie; the Attorney-General Mr Harry Whelehan; the former managing-director of the First National Building Society, Mr Joe Treacy; and the managing-director of the Irish Nationwide Building Society, Mr Michael Fingleton were part of a private consortium of “in excess of 20 individual investors” put together by New City Estates, the property management company, to buy the apartments for £8.5 million, an average of £28,000 each, last December. Some of them already listed in the Registry of Deeds as the new owners of flats in the Mespil Estate.”
The then managing director of New City Estates, which owned 600 properties in Dublin, was Michael Holland. Mr Holland’s business partner was Brendan Gilmore, who was financial adviser to Tony O’Reilly.
Harry Whelehan bought two apartments in two different blocks. Patrick MacEntee and Kevin Haugh, both barristers, bought two apartments each. Joseph McGettigan, a barrister, and Ian Candy a magistrate in Hong Kong, bought an apartment each. Louis Copeland, the tailor, Marian Finucane, the broadcaster, and Jim Milton of Murray Consultants also bought an apartment each.
Brendan Gilmore and Michael Holland, along with their associate, former deputy editor of the Sunday Business Post, James Morrissey also bought a number of apartments. Dessie Hynes, owner of Hynes’s pub in Rathgar bought a whole floor (five apartments) through a company called ODOM Ltd and the Comptroller and Auditor General, Patrick L McDonnell, bought an apartment.
[INDENT]
On May 14, 1993, The Irish Times further reported that Irish Nationwide managing director Michael Fingleton got one mortgage from his own society to buy a 1-bedroom apartment at the Mespil Estate. He also bought 3 other apartments. First National are said to have advanced the mortgages in the other cases, including in many cases 100% mortgages, to 51 customers to buy 93 apartments. Around the same time First National and Irish Life were merging.
The following day it emerged that Mr Fingleton did not register the mortgage of £110,000 which he received from Irish Nationwide, with the Central Bank, as he was obliged to do under the Building Societies Act 1989.
In 2000, it emerged that Mr Fingleton had taken out loans totalling £1.25m from Irish Nationwide, the largest of which was a loan for £757,750 taken out in March 1999. Other executives at Irish Nationwide also took out a variey of loans, as did Mr Fingleton’s brother.
It is immensely beneficial to both the State and its citizens that names of politicians who took loans – some with minimal paperwork – from Mr Fingleton have emerged.
However, the fact loans were advanced to Fianna Fail politicians, Charlie McCreevy, Francie O’Brien, Sean McCarthy and Don Lydon, in the manner detailed by Prime Time Investigates does not come as much surprise.[/INDENT][/INDENT]
I remember when Albert became Taoiseach back in 1992, RTE cameras were on hand in Longford to capture the mood - bonfires burning and dancing on the streets. I recall one woman summing it up well - ‘Longford will never win an All Ireland so Albert becoming Taoiseach was the equivalent’.
Same story with the present incumbent really.
[QUOTE=“Fagan ODowd, post: 1004341, member: 706”]I suppose the one he couldn’t shake off was that he was too close to Larry Goodman in the context of the Beef Tribunal.
[/QUOTE]
Interesting article on that subject from Fintan O’Toole today - http://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/to-pull-down-one-government-was-extraordinary-to-pull-down-two-is-inexplicable-1.1904271?page=1
[QUOTE=“Manuel Zelaya, post: 1004337, member: 377”][/QUOTE]
?
[QUOTE=“Manuel Zelaya, post: 1004337, member: 377”][/QUOTE]
huh ?
The Companies (Amendment) Act 1990 which introduced examinership to Irish law was done purely to save the Goodman Group. Article 25.2 of Constitution invoked to rush the Bill to President for signature.