Back to the Wall
09 September 2007 By Nicola CookeThe veil of mystery around businessman Micheal Wall and his financial dealings with Taoiseach Bertie Ahern may finally be lifted this week when Wall appears at the Mahon Tribunal.
A former bus company owner who emigrated from Mayo to Manchester almost 50 years ago, Wall has been at the centre of a probe by tribunal lawyers into Ahern’s finances.
However, the millionaire businessman has so far escaped the glare of publicity over the stg£30,000 in cash he gave to Ahern and his then partner, Celia Larkin, in 1994.
Both Wall and Ahern have insisted that the money was for the refurbishment of a house in Drumcondra in Dublin that Ahern was renting from Wall.
Ahern subsequently bought the house, at Beresford Avenue, from Wall in 1997 for €180,000.
Ahern and Wall also shared the same solicitor, Gerry Brennan (now deceased) and, in a will drafted before the house was sold to Ahern, Wall left the Drumcondra home to the man who would later be Taoiseach.
If Ahern were to die before Wall, the house was willed to Ahern’s two daughters in the event of Wall’s death.
Wall claims he bought the Drumcondra house because he was considering setting up a business in Dublin, but later changed his mind.
Ahern, who had separated from his wife, did not have a property, and said he needed to sort out his living arrangements as his political star rose.
The Mahon Tribunal is investigating the Taoiseach’s finances after allegations by property developer Tom Gilmartin that Owen O’Callaghan, a Cork developer, paid £80,000 to Ahern in the 1990s, an allegation strenuously denied by Ahern and O’Callaghan.
At the time, Gilmartin and O’Callaghan were involved in plans to build a major shopping centre at Quarryvale in west Dublin.
Gilmartin’s allegation has prompted the planning tribunal, under chairman Judge Alan Mahon, to probe Ahern’s finances - catapulting the very private Micheal Wall into the limelight.
On its resumption this week, the tribunal will focus on a myriad of payments to Ahern in the early 1990s, in particular the stg£30,000 Wall payment in 1994.
Ahern said that Wall asked Larkin to administer the money that he brought over to Ireland for the intended renovations.
He has said that Larkin lodged the money to an AIB account.
However, the tribunal has heard that no such sterling exchange was made on the day in question and that £28,772 lodged to an account by Larkin was the exact equivalent of $45,000 at the foreign exchange rates that day.
In response, Ahern has said he never dealt in dollars. Wall, Ahern and Larkin will now face questioning by the Mahon Tribunal’s lawyers who want to resolve the conflicting claims.
At a sitting of the tribunal earlier this year, a lawyer for Ahern accused the tribunal of allowing itself to become a platform for the airing of ‘‘preposterous allegations’’ against the Taoiseach.
In that context, Wall’s appearance at the tribunal will be particularly significant.
So who is Micheal Wall and how did he rise from a working class west of Ireland family to become a Rolls-Royce-driving millionaire who counted the Taoiseach among his good friends?
Born on April 18,1942, Wall had a modest upbringing in the village of Cong, in the Quiet Man country between Lough Corrib and Lough Mask.
With little employment to be found in an impoverished 1950s Ireland, Wall took the boat to England in his mid-teens.
Newly arrived in Manchester, he got a job driving for a minibus company. When his boss died in the 1960s, the minibus company was left to Wall, giving him his first big break. Seeing a niche in the market, Wall began operating coach services between Manchester and the west of Ireland, and expanded these into coach tours to Knock, the Ring of Kerry and Lough Derg.
The business provided decent earnings for some time but, with the launch of reasonably-priced flights between Ireland and Britain, he knew he needed to refocus his business. Wall sensed particular opportunity with the advent of bus deregulation in England.
According to transport archives, Wall was the first Manchester bus-owner to take advantage of deregulation scheduled for the city in October 26, 1986.
He was also the first private bus operator into Manchester’s central Piccadilly station on the morning services were deregulated.
Wall’s buses took over Route 42, from Manchester to West Didsbury, reputed to be the busiest and most lucrative bus route in Europe, with three universities and thousands of students using the service daily. The fleet grew as profits rose, and services were expanded to other routes.
One of those employed by Wall in 1989 was his operations manager, Peter Crichton. He now owns a timetable and scheduling software company and is a supplier to the British transport industry.
He enjoyed working with Wall but said he could be ‘‘temperamental’’ at times.
‘‘I suppose he was like any boss really, and would work all the hours God sent," Crichton said. ‘‘He was like a father figure in away, in that he would scold you if you did something wrong, but pat you on the back for an achievement.
‘‘I could write a book about my time there, but I did learn a lot. There was a funny incident with Mike I will never forget: he was convinced one of the drivers was fiddling the takings on board a bus. One night, myself, two plain clothes officers and Mike went down to East Didsbury, practically stalking the driver.
‘‘Mike actually climbed up a tree to look into the bus and see what the driver was doing with the takings. It was like a comedy scene from a Carry On.
‘‘Having said that, he sometimes put a bit extra in my pay packet. His wife, Sheila, was also great to get on with, and his boys, John and Stephen, came to work in the company. Looking back, I gained some valuable experience at Walls."
John Owen, a board member at the Greater Manchester Transport Museum, said that Wall’s bus company maintained very high standards.
‘‘They strove hard to box above their weight," Owen said. ‘‘There was great pride in the company and they were quite successful, considering the competition there was with bigger operators."
Buses were not the only business interest for Wall. He bought and sold plots of land in Manchester, much of it disused British Rail land on which commercial parks and retail outlets were subsequently built.
In 1996, Stagecoach bought out Wall’s business, which then operated a fleet of 16 buses, in a deal believed to be worth several million pounds.
‘‘I shouldn’t think that deal reflected the true value of the company so, from their point of view, it was a good move," Owen said.
Despite his success as an Irish emigrant, Wall did not play a major role in the Mayo community in Manchester, many of whose members had made fortunes as contractors, property developers and engineers. At the now infamous dinner in the Four Seasons in Manchester in 1994, when businessmen Tim Kilroe, John Kennedy and others donated £8,000 to Ahern, Wall was there in a working capacity, driving the bus.
Wall ‘‘didn’t eat the dinner’’, according to Ahern. One associate who has known Wall for 30 years said he ‘‘likes to keep to himself’’.
‘‘He wasn’t ever really part of the Mayo mafia in Manchester. He did go to some of the Irish association’s dinner dances, but hasn’t been at them for the last ten or 12 years, and he never really visited the Irish club in Chorlton," the associate said. ‘‘He is a quiet bloke who has never been flamboyant. Even his house in Wythenshawe Road is tatty and rundown now."
Wall’s one weakness seems to be Rolls Royce cars, which he has driven for the past 20 years. Wall visits Cong a few times each year and some people who know him there speak of seeing him driving Ahern and Larkin to the nearby Ashford Castle when the two first began dating.
In Cong, Wall was involved in a quarrying business with one of his brothers and had a share in Mac’s Bar in Cornamona with another.
The pub, which is beside a marina Wall helped to fund, has been closed for the last two years, but had been used as a venue for local Fianna Fail cumann meetings.
One pub owner in Cong said Wall was a customer and ‘‘is a nice man and highly respected here’’.
‘‘There have been thousands of words written about Micheal Wall and half of it is inaccurate," he said. ‘‘People here are more worried about the weather this year than they are about Micheal and what is said about him."
One of the shopkeepers in the small village said Wall owned ‘‘a bit of property around the place’’ and a few years ago sold a small crafts shop with living quarters above it.
‘‘He has two brothers here, and two others in Cork and Galway," the shopkeeper said. ‘‘The brothers are all quiet too, but they were part of the Fianna Fail gang. I haven’t seen the family together for years. We don’t give a damn about the petty stuff between Bertie and Micheal Wall when you compare it to the raft of stuff that’s gone on before all this."
It is unlikely that the tribunal feels the same way. At the sittings in Dublin Castle, Wall can expect to be grilled over the tiniest details of his relationship with Ahern that led to the duo becoming landlord and tenant - and later vendor and buyer.
Not least of the questions Wall faces is why he decided to will his newly-acquired property in Drumcondra to Ahern a year before the latter bought the house. It was an unusually thoughtful gesture for a hardnosed businessman - and one that the tribunal will want explained.