Liam Lawlor | |
|---|---|
| Teachta Dála | |
| In office February 1987 – May 2002 | |
| In office February 1982 – November 1982 | |
| Constituency | Dublin West |
| In office June 1977 – June 1981 | |
| Constituency | Dublin County West |
| Personal details | |
| Born | (1944-10-19)19 October 1944 Crumlin, Dublin, Ireland |
| Died | 22 October 2005(2005-10-22) (aged 61) Moscow, Russia |
| Political party |
|
| Spouse | Hazel Barber |
| Children | 4 |
Liam Lawlor (19 October 1944 – 22 October 2005) was an IrishFianna Fáil politician. He resigned from the Fianna Fáil in 2000 following a finding by a party standards committee that he had failed to co-operate with its investigation into planning irregularities, and subsequently came into conflict with theMahon Tribunal.
Lawlor was born inDublin in 1944.[1] He grew up inCrumlin and was educated atSynge Street CBS and the College of Technology, Bolton Street (now part of theDublin Institute of Technology). In his youth he playedhurling and was on the Dublin minor and theLeinsterRailway Cup hurling teams. After college he went into the refrigeration business, running his own company.
In 1974, he unsuccessfully stood as a candidate in the local elections toDublin County Council. At the1977 general election he was elected toDáil Éireann as aFianna FáilTeachta Dála (TD) for theDublin County West constituency.[2] In 1979, he became a member ofDublin County Council.
At the1981 general election he lost his Dáil seat in what was now the constituency ofDublin West, regained it inFebruary 1982, but lost it again in theNovember 1982 general election.[3] Lawlor regained his Dáil seat again at the1987 general election, and was appointed Chairman of theOireachtas Joint Committee on Commercial State-Sponsored Bodies. He resigned the position in 1989 due to his position as a non-executive director of Food Industries, a company that wished to acquire theIrish Sugar Company. In 1991 he lost his seat on Dublin City Council, and at the1992 general election he nearly lost his Dáil seat toTomás Mac Giolla of theWorkers' Party. It is widely believed that Mac Giolla was cheated by Fianna Fáil in the election; the emergence of information that the since disgraced and jailedGeorge Redmond was one of the local government officials who conducted the election count has added weight to this view.[4]
Lawlor was one of a number of local councillors who were called as witnesses before theMahon Tribunal investigating planning and payments inCounty Dublin. He admitted receiving sums of money from the lobbyistFrank Dunlop which he stated were political donations and not bribes.[5]
Lawlor was also a European member of the controversial private political group, theTrilateral Commission.
In the light of allegations of planning corruption, Fianna Fáil established an internal committee on Standards in Public Life. The committee interviewed a number of party members, including Lawlor, but eventually found that Lawlor had failed to co-operate with it by not naming an individual who had furnished him with a donation. On the eve of publication of the committee report in June 2000, Lawlor resigned from the party; however he continued to support the government inDáil Éireann. He did not stand at the2002 general election. Lawlor appeared at theFlood Tribunal several times and was imprisoned on three occasions (in January 2001, January 2002 and February 2002, for a total of six weeks) inMountjoy Prison forcontempt of court arising from Orders of the High Court requiring him to co-operate with the tribunal. The final report of the Tribunal, eventually chaired by Justice Alan Mahon, was published on 22 March 2012.
On 7 February 2002 Lawlor was released from jail to make a Dáil appearance during which he ignored unprecedented all-party calls for his resignation. In what theIrish Independent described as "one of the most sensational days in the House", Lawlor was released temporarily by theHigh Court to mount his own defence during an hour-long debate. Taken intoLeinster House in a prison van, Lawlor sat alone at the rear of the Chamber while the five party leaders, in turn, called on him to step down. Instead Lawlor made an aggressive defence of his own position during a 20-minute speech while making no reference at all to the unprecedented joint motion.
TaoiseachBertie Ahern, said Lawlor had repeatedly let politics down and his position was untenable.[6] Lawlor, he said, had been committed to prison three times and political life was "cheapened" by this. No vote was required as the decision to ask him to resign was unanimous. Lawlor was released by the High Court for about two hours on third day of his 28-day sentence for not co-operating with the Flood Tribunal. As the Dáil sat at 10.30am, Lawlor's legal advisers were petitioning the High Court to allow him make his own case to his fellow TDs. High Court president Justice Joseph Finnegan granted the request but laid down strict conditions on Lawlor's release, saying he was to be taken from Mountjoy to Leinster House, stay for the debate and then be returned to jail.
Lawlor was killed on 22 October 2005, when theMercedes-Benz car he was being driven in on the way fromSheremetyevo International Airport crashed into a concrete street light on theLeningrad Shosse, the main road betweenSaint Petersburg and Moscow, twenty-three kilometres from Moscow. Lawlor had been travelling with Julia Kushnir, a Ukrainian legal assistant, aged 29, confirmed by the Lawlor family to be working as Lawlor'sinterpreter in Russia. She was injured in the crash that killed Lawlor. The driver, a Russian businessman, Ruslan Suleymanov, was fatally injured, when he swerved the car to avoid a man and a woman who ran out onto the road in front of it.[7]
The funeral of Lawlor was held inLucan on 26 October 2005.
The Russian police initially reported that the woman in Lawlor's car may have been a sixteen-year-old prostitute.[8] The report was the lead in a number of Sunday newspapers.[9] TheSunday Independent editorAengus Fanning apologised to the Lawlor family for the report, following a public outcry on the reportage and condemnation of the publication from theNational Union of Journalists. TheSunday Tribune, theSunday World,The Observer, and a number of Britishtabloids also published the claim.The Observer initially refused to apologise for the error, but on the Tuesday following the accident, the newspaper issued a statement saying that "serious discrepancies" had arisen in the story it had published, and admitted that it had erred,[10] removing the story from its website. The controversial nature of the coverage led to calls for a body to regulate and oversee standards in the Irish press similar to thePress Complaints Commission in the UK.