What is going on?

On Monday, an Irish Examiner report revealed that Fianna Fail had failed to disclose donations from some of the country’s biggest developers: Ballymore Properties and Durkan New Homes. The news has been greeted with apparent silence elsewhere in the media. I have to wonder why.

It strikes me as important given that electoral law looks to have been broken, and Fianna Fail have responded with rather nonsensical denials that anything untoward has happened.

The information was revealed only because of a series of requests and an FOI request, that up until this year, had never been performed by anyone. Other companies turned up in the trawl, including:

Mosney Irish Holidays
MP Administration
Bridford Properties
Omega Aviation Services
Beechill Growers
Airscape Limited
Harcourt Developments Limited
Garland Homes
Harte Designs
Burgrove Limited
Williams Motor Warehouse
Seabass Limited
Poplar Linens Trading Company
O’Riain Associates International
McGettigan Construction Limited

These donations were declared under the Companies Act and Electoral Act, but the amounts given were not known until this week. They are not the only companies.

I know probably more than most that looking at a list of limited companies is not very appealing. So it is perhaps helpful to look behind the companies, who directs them, and then trawl newspaper archives to see what business they have been involved in.

Ballymore is famous enough, Sean Mulryan is one of the country’s best known developers. But what of the others? Let’s start digging. First up: Burgrove Limited.

[Disclosure: I work for the Irish Examiner]