First published in the Irish Mail on Sunday on 20/05/2007
By: MICHAEL O’FARRELL
Investigative Correspondent
ON FRIDAY, May 4, an unknown Fianna Fáil supporter sat down at a computer to put the finishing touches to a document.
The file – called ‘Memo re Rehab’ – was then printed off and saved to the machine’s F drive.
With just 20 days left before polling day, and after months of sustaining damage from leaked tribunal documents, Fianna Fáil was about to get down and dirty.
Whatever politicians say, no election passes without its share of dirty tricks from the trivial to the deadly serious.
The trick Fianna Fáil was about to play fell firmly into the latter category, even if its execution was somewhat haphazard.
The intended smear involved serious but wholly unsubstantiated accusations that Fine Gael election director Frank Flannery and others close to the party were associated with large-scale financial irregularities at international charity group Rehab.
Mind you, it was not the only scurrilous allegation to do the rounds this week.
Fine Gael party leader Enda Kenny has ended up the subject of a string of utterly bizarre and totally unfounded rumours in what has become an increasingly febrile election.
The allegations against Mr Kenny have not only been spread by word of mouth but also through the pages of malicious websites.
A nervous party spokesman admitted last night that ‘Fine Gael have been fielding calls all week about a variety of allegations against Mr Kenny’.
Taoiseach Bertie Ahern has also been the subject in the past of scurrilous and wholly unsubstantiated claims about his private life.
There is no evidence that there is a single grain of truth in either these or the damaging charges the memo levied against Mr Flannery, who stood down as Rehab boss last summer six months after his right-hand man and fellow Fine Gael supporter John Hussey departed as vice-chairman.
Never mind. As far as Fianna Fáil supporters were concerned, the ‘Flannery File’ was going to find its way into the press.
However, before the Soldiers of Destiny could start throwing mud, a little more work was needed.
Six days after the initial memo was written, and probably using it as a guide, another Fianna Fáil supporter logged onto the internet in London on Thursday, May 10.
Working from an office at 10 Station Yard, Park Avenue, Southall, this mystery person set about compiling a detailed brief to back up the Rehab allegations.
Wikipedia was consulted for information about Fine Gael National Executive member Enda Marren, a director of Rehab.
Information about Frank Flannery and his 33-year spell as the head of Rehab was pulled off the website of the Irish Business and Employer’s Federation (IBEC) The home pages of the British Chaseley Trust and global disability organisation Workability International were also consulted. Mr Flannery is trustee of the former and president of the latter.
Then, also on May 10, information about Frank Flannery’s company directorships was accessed on the website of Companies House in London.
But whoever was compiling this information also deemed it necessary to check out John Hussey – twin brother of Derry Hussey, husband of Gemma Hussey. A former minister for education, social welfare and labour, Gemma Hussey’s name evokes Fine Gael like few others – and unsubstantiated but explosive allegations about her brother-in-law’s dealings with Frank Flannery at Rehab are central to the story Fianna Fáil was attempting to piece together.
Until his unannounced and apparently sudden departure from Rehab on February 16, 2005, Mr Hussey had been vice-chairman of the Rehab Group.
The unsubstantiated Fianna Fáil memo alleges that he and Frank Flannery had been involved in sanctioning expenses and consultancy fees for each other, something the Rehab board had supposedly become concerned about.
To complete the picture, whoever was responsible for compiling this brief finally accessed all of Mr Hussey’s company directorships on vision-net.ie, a subscriptiononly company-information service.
One company in particular – Cumberdale Investments Ltd – was circled in ink to ensure anyone perusing the file would realise the firm was in liquidation.
But this is not the only instance of a struggling, liquidated firm in this saga of dirty politics and subterfuge.
Another firm being liquidated – Hennellys Utilities Ltd – plays a central role.
Indeed it was from Hennelly’s Southall office that someone faxed copies of the collated internet information on Friday, May 11, a week after the first memo had been written.
The company’s fax number – 020 85710771 – is still visible on the sheets that were faxed to a third party in Ireland to be discretely passed onto journalists.
By the next day, the Irish Mail on Sunday and the Sunday Independent had already received an anonymous folder containing the brief. RTÉ, too, received the file.
Helpfully, the Fianna Fáil memo even suggested relevant questions that journalists should ask of Mr Flannery and Rehab.
Why was the departure of Mr Hussey not announced? What was Mr Flannery’s settlement package?
Was the board dissatisfied with financial accountability?
Were they signing off each other’s contracts and expenses?
Leading questions were also posed about Mr Flannery’s lifestyle and how he funded it. But perhaps the most interesting nugget involved details of more than E300,000 in consultancy fees paid by Rehab to John Hussey over a two-year period. In some respects, it does appear unusual for a vice-chairman to be paid consultancy fees by his own organisation, especially as he was politically linked to his superior.
However, there was no evidence to back up any claim of anything untoward about the payments.
Speaking to the MoS last night, Mr Hussey denied the claims. ‘At all stages, any requests for fees were approved in the appropriate manner,’ he said before referring further queries to Rehab.
Fine Gael, too, referred questions to Rehab. ‘We are aware that questions have been circulated in relation to certain issues at the Rehab group. Any queries should be directed to Angela Kerins at Rehab,’ said a spokesman.
Miss Kerins, the current chief executive, also said any payments to Mr Hussey were fully above board and that any contracts between him and Rehab had been ‘terminated by mutual agreement’.
‘Mr Hussey did provide management consultancy services through his company, Hussey & Co, to Rehab and its subsidiaries, on corporate finance matters.
These included advice on acquisitions, disposals and investment opportunities,’ she said.
Miss Kerins did not respond to a number of questions asking how much Mr Flannery and Mr Hussey had received in expenses and golden handshakes. Nor did she address questions about whether salaries and expenses were being drawn simultaneously from Rehab companies in Ireland and Britain.
Some of these may, indeed, be valid questions but, given the circumstances, the most interesting question is why on earth such information was emanating, at least in part, from the London office of Hennellys Utilities Ltd?
Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that the owner of the firm is none other than Fianna Fáil fundraiser Seán Hennelly, 61.
He denied any knowledge of the papers, saying he had a personal fax machine with a different number to the office one.
‘I guarantee, it certainly did not come from me. That’s for sure. If I was to fax something, it would not be from that machine. There’s over 30 people using that fax,’ he said.
Mr Hennelly said he became aware of Mr Flannery only recently because of his connections to Rehab.
‘I don’t know Frank Flannery from Adam other than that he did a very good job there,’ he said.
Though he is a Fianna Fáil supporter, Mr Hennelly said he did not even have a vote.
‘I do a golf day once a year but I don’t canvass or anything.’ But Mr Hennelly’s party connections go back a long way and this is not the first time his Fianna Fáil associations have made headlines.
Like many Fianna Fáil supporters and benefactors, he is the owner of a large construction business albeit a perpetually failing one if dissolutions and liquidations are any indicator.
In 1998, he was banned from holding company directorships in England for eight years after running up debts of £10m through a number of failed companies.
Engaged in everything from Channel Tunnel work to railway and motorway construction, Mr Hennelly’s various firms even saw him enter the publishing, personnel hire and waste-collection sectors.
At one point, he employed 100 people in Ireland through Hennellys Civil Engineering, a Galway firm long since dissolved. In November 1998, the former publican and newspaper publisher was listed as the organiser of a Friends of Fianna Fáil celebration dinner scheduled for London’s plush Grosvenor House Hotel.
However, after mounting negative publicity about Mr Hennelly’s insolvency problems, the party claimed his inclusion on the list was an administrative error.
Newspapers at the time reported that Fianna Fáil sources declined to confirm that Mr Hennelly was chairman of the Friends of Fianna Fáil Golf Classic committee.
It seems they will soon again be denying links with Mr Hennelly.
But whether or not anyone central in Fianna Fáil was in any way behind the Rehab allegations, there is a certain poetic irony that the scheme was being cooked up by party friends just as Mr Ahern finally managed to shake off months of damaging tribunal leaks.
Despite his determination to leave the issue behind, he couldn’t help but refer to his belief that Fine Gael had waged a concerted ninemonth campaign against him.
‘There’s no doubt about that,’ he said on Monday. ‘It didn’t just happen and I certainly don’t think it was put together by the media.
People were orchestrating this.’ Mr Ahern went as far as alleging the campaign had been planned in a west Galway hotel last August.
‘I’ve no evidence. I can’t prove it but I was tipped off way back last August that these things were being talked out in west Galway in a particular hotel and people were chatting about it,’ he said. Party handlers Mandy Johnston and PJ Mara this week refused point blank to discuss the comment.
‘We’ve put it behind us and we’re moving on,’ said a brusque Mr Mara.
But the slur had already been put into the public domain. Inevitably, the finger of suspicion was being pointed at Renvyle House Hotel, the exclusive Connemara hideaway where politicians and lawyers have summered for generations.
It was over a series of nightcaps in the bar of Renvyle House that the PDs were dreamed up in the 1980s.
What more plausible venue for another plot to destabilise a charismatic Fianna Fáil leader?
Suggestions that Bertiegate is a Fine Gael plot have been fuelled by the revelation that a formal Garda inquiry has been launched into the leak to the Irish Times.
At the centre of the inquiry are allegations that private correspondence between the tribunal and recruitment millionaire David McKenna – one of eight friends who contributed £22,000 to Mr Ahern in 1993 – was stolen and leaked.
Irish Times editor Geraldine Kennedy and reporter Colm Keena are currently locked in a High Court battle to protect their source.
In the meantime, however, there is ample opportunity to point the finger of suspicion.
Unfortunately for Fianna Fáil, there will be no need for a Garda inquiry to establish who was playing dirty this week. The party has already been caught red-handed.
A LONG, IGNOBLE TRADITION
There is only one rule when it comes to dirty election tricks – don’t get caught. Otherwise, anything goes as plenty of previous efforts have shown.
Perhaps the dirtiest election stunt ever was perpetrated against Dublin Independent TD Tony Gregory in 1981.
As polling day dawned, rivals plastered bogus posters all over the constituency: ‘Vote Tony Gregory. Support the H-Block hunger strikers,’ read the dud slogans. He rushed to tear them down but the damage was done.
He lost his seat by 150 votes.
In 1987, Barry Desmond, Labour Party TD for Dún Laoghaire and outgoing minister for health, was on the receiving end of damaging allegations in a leaflet circulated by John P Clerkin, secretary of the Children’s Protection Society.
Entitled ‘Barry Desmond and Sexual Exploitation’, the document claimed Mr Desmond was ‘perhaps the only member of the outgoing Dáil to have called for child contraception…’ He was forced to obtain an injunction to ban the leaflet and managed to hang onto his seat.
But many dirty tricks – tearing down posters, spreading rumours and so on – involve candidates of the same party.
So concerned at such behaviour was Fianna Fáil Kerry North TD Tom McEllistrim that, in 1977, he took out a last-minute ad in the Kerryman newspaper.
‘There is a rumour going around that my seat is safe… this is a mistake. My seat could be in danger… I appeal to my voters to come out and vote for me.’ The Fianna Fáil director of elections tried to buy every copy of the Kerryman but the newspaper resisted his attempts.
