by Tom Reddy
After the program Lynch explained:
I felt I just had to ring up. He just couldn’t get away with that. I felt on that programme this morning that he was trying to say it was a Sinn Féin conspiracy against him. I just thought that’s not fair.
She revealed that she was a former Fianna Fáil voter, until the second-last general election, when she changed her allegiance. She said she now intended voting for Higgins in the presidential election.
Does that mean that he thinks that all other women and all ordinary voters don’t have an opinion and don’t want answers to those questions?
I feel it’s like we have somebody who is running for the Presidency and we can’t ask him questions, and it’s an attack on him if we do. Questions are questions, and it’s reasonable to ask them.
She explained that she picked up her information from the newspapers, as she had a big interest in current affairs, and added that revelations in the media that Gallagher had charged GAA clubs in his home county of Louth as much as €5,000 to help out with applications for sports grants ‘says so much about the man.’
While Lynch had brought Gallagher’s record as an entrepreneur and businessman and his dealings into the glare of the television and radio spotlight, these issues had also been pursued in the print media. Colm Keena, the public affairs correspondent of the Irish Times, that morning published an article alleging that questions surrounding Gallagher’s financial affairs remained. Gallagher’s main source of income appeared to be from ‘motivational speaking’, he said, and his fortunes rose with the property bubble but hit a wall with the rest of the building industry as that bubble burst.
The good news for RTE was that the ‘Frontline’ programme was a huge success. Ratings for the station arrived that morning. They showed that the final debate in the race for the Áras had attracted a peak audience of 900,000, which would turn out to be just over half the total valid poll. The first television debate of the campaign, on TV3 with Vincent Browne, had a comparably high peak audience of 820,500 viewers.
Meanwhile that morning in Drogheda, McGuinness took a few minutes off the canvass with Gerry Adams in his constituency to talk to the press and to repeat his ‘Frontline’ claims about Gallagher.
The reality is that the assertion I made that there was an event in the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Dundalk attended by something in the region of thirty people, which raised, according to Fianna Fáil, in the region of €100,000, €5,000 of which came from an individual who told me on the telephone before I went onto the ‘Frontline’ programme that Seán Gallagher travelled to his home and collected a cheque for €5,000. Seán effectively admitted that in the course of that discussion last night. I think that’s all that needs to be said about it. The people of Ireland will judge whether that represents the rottenness at the heart of the previous administration or not.
He would also admit that there was a ‘misunderstanding’ about when the cheque was given.
Due to a misunderstanding during the conversation I was under the impression the cheque was delivered after the event but it’s only overnight I have learnt the cheque was delivered four days before the event took place.
That afternoon Gallagher was back to his campaign headquarters to prepare for a recorded interview with Matt Cooper of Today FM. He wrote a feature article for the following day’s Evening Herald that would be headlined ‘I’m victim of Sinn Féin ambush for connecting McGuinness to killing’ and began preparing for the live 6:01 RTE news interview with Bryan Dobson.
On Today FM he was asked about his business dealings. Cooper was a former business editor of the Irish Independent, and he explained that the cheque for €82,829 from Beach House (which dealt with his income from speaking engagements and a Dragons’ Den investment) that had first been treated as a loan to him was moved back into the correct account within four weeks when spotted by his accountants. It was an honest mistake by his bookkeeper’s secretary. There was no breach of company law, he said.
Outside the shared Today FM and Newstalk offices, behind the St Stephen’s Green Shopping Centre, he was doorstepped by Colm Keena of the Irish Times. Gallagher refused to answer his questions, referring them to his staff. Clearly angry, he said, ‘I am going to clear my name from a lie and a smear campaign from Sinn Féin. I was on national TV last night and I was accused of being a liar, and I am going to deal with this first.’
The following day Keena published a half-page article, ‘Gallagher: the issues’, which included his business record, including the loans he had taken out of his company as a director, other draw-downs from the company, such as patent royalties, rent and director’s fees, and the level of state support for his company.
He recorded Gallagher’s denials, including comments by a corporate governance expert, Niamh Brennan, about a ‘bad vibe’ about these aspects of Gallagher’s record and Glenna Lynch’s accusation that he had raided the coffers of his business. He claimed that everything he had done was above board and denied weakening his company by taking too much money out of it, saying it had survived because it was prudently managed.
The three other issues were his father’s farm, patent and company income and the Louth County Enterprise Board.
The Higgins campaign bus was doing a sweep through the south-east with a stop-over in Gaelcholáiste Cheatharlach in Carlow. Then, with his wife at his side, it was on to Dublin for a final press conference at the Alexander Hotel in Fenian Street.
The Labour Party leader, Eamon Gilmore, and its candidate were ‘on message’. It was a two-horse race, and, perhaps sensing weakness in his opponent, Higgins took a second swipe at an increasingly beleaguered Gallagher. He said he had a clear policy difference with Gallagher in relation to job creation—a central plank in Gallagher’s campaign. Higgins acknowledged that if he was elected he could not behave as he had when he was a minister, but he could be a source of inspiration at home while assisting in attracting foreign investment. ‘Now that’s very different from saying one wants to elect an entrepreneur. I believe in entrepreneurship, but social entrepreneurship,’ he said.
He went on to address both issues that were damaging to Gallagher. He admitted he was not an expert in the management of companies but said there appeared to be public concern about transparency. ‘The public anxiety should be fully satisfied. And that’s important.’ All candidates had to be ‘so fully transparent as to answer any question of trust and openness which people may put to us.’ Asked about the ‘Frontline’ programme, he admitted to being surprised about the manner in which McGuinness had raised allegations about Gallagher collecting a €5,000 cheque at a fund-raising event. ‘It is true to say that as it unfolded more detail was emerging, but I really don’t want to get involved in labelling … All the questions should be answered.’
Gilmore was more robust. It’s a two-horse race, he claimed, and the contest would be close in both first preferences and transfers. He reminded voters that Higgins was attracting support throughout the political campaign and, further appealing to any ‘soft’ vote, he urged voters to switch their vote to the Labour Party, borrowing the Davis slogan, for a candidate who ‘would command respect at home and abroad.’
Hugh Morgan, the man identified by Gallagher in all but name, issued a statement the same afternoon. His company, Morgan Fuels, a sponsor of the Armagh GAA football team since 1997, owns more than four thousand filling stations in Ireland and Britain and continental Europe, including the Netherlands, Slovenia and Italy. The company also has a heating-oil business and has offices in Newry and Dundalk.
Morgan had surfaced in February 2011 before the general election when it emerged that he owned the building in Dundalk where Gerry Adams had his constituency office in his first tilt at winning office in the Republic. Asked at the time if he had any qualms about renting an office from a convicted fuel-smuggler, Adams replied: ‘It’s a totally bona fide legal contract between Sinn Féin and the owner of the building. It’s a short-term commercial lease. Sin é. That’
s it.’
A Sinn Féin spokesperson confirmed that, eight months later, Gerry Adams TD was still based in the Park Street premises and that a new lease had not yet been signed.
In 1998, aged thirty-eight, Morgan was given a suspended sentence when he pleaded guilty to charges of fuel-smuggling. The court was told he had paid £500,000 in excise duties and VAT owed on smuggled fuel. He was also ordered to pay £25,000 towards the costs of the prosecution.
In his statement, Morgan claimed that Gallagher had contacted him by phone, was invited to the dinner and asked for a donation.
He first phoned me on 6 June 2008 and invited me to the fund-raiser. In the course of the call he requested a donation of €5,000 for Fianna Fáil. On 27 June Seán Gallagher visited my business premises at Killean, Co. Armagh. I wrote a cheque for €5,000 and gave it to him personally. In return for the €5,000 donation I was promised a private audience with the Taoiseach and I would get a photograph taken with him.
He went on to say that on the night of the fund-raiser Gallagher introduced him to Cowen and that he had his photograph taken with him. ‘Approximately one week later Seán Gallagher called back to my business and gave me the photograph.’ He also made the photograph available to the media.
He confirmed that he was convicted of tax evasion fourteen years previously in relation to fuel-smuggling in Northern Ireland. ‘As a consequence of that I have repaid the exchequer and paid a substantial fine. I was never investigated by CAB or any other agency in the Republic.’ He added that his business was successful and employed more than eighty people in Ireland, North and South.
The figure of €5,000 was significant, as, according to the law, only donations of €5,078.95 or more have to be declared to the Standards in Public Office Commission. The donation, therefore, effectually remained secret.
RTE’s Six One news that evening led with the Gallagher, McGuinness and Morgan claims. Gallagher gave a recorded interview, broadcast as the lead item, claiming furiously that ‘this is political assassination’.
In the second half of the programme he was interviewed live in the studio. Bryan Dobson put the Morgan statement to him: ‘He said you phoned him up to invite him to attend this event and that he would then make a donation of five thousand euros to Fianna Fáil, that you visited him twice in his business premises and on one of those occasions he handed you over the cheque for five thousand euros. Is that the case?’
Gallagher replied: ‘This is part of the ongoing smear campaign that I have endured for over a week from Sinn Féin, and the point is that it culminated last night live on TV on ‘Frontline’s’ programme. Mr McGuinness made the accusation that I had visited Hugh Morgan’s home after the event to deliver a photograph of the fund-raising event with the Taoiseach.’
‘Did you visit him on that occasion to deliver the photograph?’
‘No. What I stated last night—the accusation was that I visited his home after the event to deliver a photograph and I was given a cheque. Now, that’s an absolute lie. When I challenged Mr McGuinness today he retracted that, but only following the fact that Fianna Fáil came out this morning, having checked their records, to show that the cheque was made out and lodged before the event took place.’
‘This is the man directly involved, Hugh Morgan, and what he’s saying is that he indeed handed over the cheque in advance of the event, and he handed it over to you.’
‘And that’s what he’s claiming now, and this allegation arose last week as soon as I began to emerge in the poll.’
‘Is this the case or not?’
‘It is not the case.’
‘Can you be absolutely sure of that?’
‘Absolutely, because the night that Mr Morgan turned up to the event—and I didn’t know Mr Morgan before the event—I was contacted by Fianna Fáil headquarters to invite some local business people. I invited possibly three or four. Mr Morgan was one of them, referenced by somebody else. He was the sponsor of the Armagh football team. I had never met the man; when he turned up on the night I didn’t recognise him.’
‘Sorry—if you can be so emphatic that you did not visit his business premises and collect a cheque now, why were you not in a position to give that clear answer last night when this issue arose in the first place?’
‘Yes, let me clarify. This issue arose last week when I was asked did I collect a cheque before the event, which was the allegation last week. I clarified.’
‘Which is this—is the same allegation as tonight. Mr Morgan has been consistent in what he has been saying on this.’
‘No, what happened was, the allegation was levelled last week. The paper in question investigated and found that Mr Morgan had a criminal record and didn’t go ahead with it. I clarified at that point that I had not met Mr Morgan before the event.’
‘Just to clarify, he had a conviction for smuggling.’
‘For fuel-smuggling, yes. He had also given his premises to Gerry Adams for his election campaign. I disputed that allegation, and it wasn’t run. Last night it turned up in a different guise, where Mr McGuinness levelled these allegations after claiming that he had spoken to Mr Morgan two hours previously.’
‘What you said last night was that you had no recollection of getting a cheque from this guy.’
‘Correct.’
‘Okay, is it that you had no recollection—it might have happened but you can’t recall—or can you say emphatically that you did not receive a cheque?’
Again Gallagher replied emphatically. ‘I did not receive a cheque from Mr Morgan.’
‘Why didn’t you say that when you were asked it the first time around? Because the truth is generally fairly simple, isn’t it?’
‘Well, here’s the point. I made the point all along that I did not receive a cheque from this man before the event. Mr McGuinness then threw this at me last night, followed by a tweet from Sinn Féin to say that they were going to produce this man. I was shell-shocked that this was thrown in and that he was saying that I had delivered a photograph and collected a cheque, when I knew quite clearly, in my mind—’
‘Why were you “shell-shocked” when a journalist came to your campaign team last week and said that these allegations had been made by Hugh Morgan in Armagh?’
‘Hugh Morgan said that I had collected a cheque in advance of—and I am quite clear, and Mr Morgan said in his statement that he wrote a cheque on the 27th when I visited the premises. Fianna Fáil are saying here in their statement that the cheque was written on the 26th and was lodged.’
‘It’s dated on the 26th, they said. Incidentally, they don’t tell us how the cheque was delivered to Fianna Fáil headquarters, whether it arrived in the post or whether it was delivered personally, or whether you went in with it as the Fianna Fáil bagman.’
‘I wasn’t a Fianna Fáil bagman. The organisation—headquarters—had organised this event. I let some business people know about it. I did not collect a cheque off Mr Morgan and—and Mr McGuinness’s attempt last night was an absolute slur and is what I have been dealing with, Bryan, for the last week and a half, allegation after allegation in an attempt, solely because I am now leading in the polls.’
‘Mr Morgan says that he never met you before, he didn’t know you when you made this approach—it was a cold call, if you like, to see if he’d come along, because the cheque—’
‘Somebody had given me his name.’
‘Presumably when you phoned him up you did tell him there would be a donation of five thousand euros expected to attend this?’
‘Well, I was asked to say that there was a level of up to five thousand euros. I have no idea—’
‘That’s what you told him?’
‘Correct.’
‘That he would pay five thousand for this?’
‘Up to.’
‘But previously your spokesman said you did not solicit a donation for Fianna Fáil. That’s not true, is it?’
‘That’s not true. What I said was that there was a
fund-raising event happening, and if he’d like to come along he could make a donation.’
‘Right. And that doesn’t count as soliciting? No?’
‘I’m saying that that’s what I said.’
‘Is that not soliciting a donation?’
‘It could be.’
‘Then why did your spokesman say you did not solicit a donation?’
‘Well, I’m not sure what my spokesman said, but I’m telling you now exactly what I said.’
‘I’ll give you the exact quote,’ said Dobson. Reading the paper on his desk, he continued: ‘Your spokesman said that “at no point did he actively solicit any donations. He would have been in touch with a number of people he knew, to tell them it was on”, only to discover you didn’t know Mr Morgan—so that’s not true either.’
‘Let me clarify this. I asked a number of business people in the area did they want to attend, and one of them obviously recommended Mr Morgan as somebody who might like to attend.’
‘So you did ask people you didn’t know, it now turns out.’
‘I did ask people I did know, and if they recommended somebody else that they knew. And so—’
Dobson honed in on the admission. ‘So you did invite people you didn’t know, and you did solicit a donation from at least one of those people?’
‘This was a fund-raising event, and I informed anybody that I rang that there was a level up to which they could nominate or donate, and that they would make that payable to Fianna Fáil headquarters.’
Dobson sat back in his seat and softened his tone. ‘None of this is remarkable at all. It’s what you’d expect anybody who is involved in a political party to do after an election, to try and rebuild the party coffers: ring around people who have assets and say, “Will you come along and support us?” You were doing what any other senior political Fianna Fáil figure would do?’
