THE taoiseach has never attempted to recover the €60,000 in damages and costs awarded by a Dublin court after he sued a Cork developer for libel.

In 2001, Bertie Ahern successfully sued Denis “Starry” O’Brien in the circuit court over a false claim that he had been paid IR£50,000 (€63,500) by the developer in 1989.

Yesterday a spokeswoman for Ahern confirmed that he has sought neither damages nor costs in the five years since. But following an inquiry from The Sunday Times, she said that the taoiseach is now planning to do so.

Ahern brought the defamation case against O’Brien over claims the Cork builder had first made at the Flood tribunal and which were repeated in an interview with Frank Connolly in a Sunday Business Post article in 2000.

O’Brien said that Owen O’Callaghan, a developer involved in the controversial Quarryvale rezoning, paid IR£100,000 into a bank in order for O’Brien to make payments of IR£50,000 each to Ahern and another Fianna Fail politician, now retired.

Tom Gilmartin, another developer, also testified to the tribunal that O’Callaghan had privately told him of a payment to Ahern of IR£50,000 at the time.

When Ahern took the case in August 2000, O’Brien instructed his legal team to defend the action, providing them with pass books and bank statements to corroborate his claims. However, 10 months later, when hearings began, O’Brien ordered his legal team not to run a defence.

Despite having won the case, Ahern’s legal team brought a series of witnesses to the court, including the managing director of the Irish Nationwide Building Society. He was to testify that documents purporting to prove the existence of the account through which the alleged payments were made had been forged.

No complaints by the bank, criminal charges or garda investigation have followed against the developer.

It has now emerged that Ahern never made an effort to recover the €30,000 damages he was awarded, nor the legal costs which were awarded against O’Brien by the court.

As well as employing solicitors for 10 months, Ahern hired three barristers for the case. They included Rory Brady, a senior counsel, who was made attorney-general a year later. A conservative estimate of the legal costs owed to the taoiseach would be €30,000.

Yesterday Ahern’s spokeswoman said that he had brought the case as a private individual and would have had to pay the legal fees himself. She agreed that he has never sought the damages nor the legal fees. “He will do so before the time limit for taking the fees expires, apparently some time next year,” she said.

Ahern could register a judgment mortgage against O’Brien’s house in Cork, meaning the debt would be paid if he sold the property.

Last week the registry of deeds for Cork confirmed that no judgment mortgage has been filed against O’Brien’s home other than for unrelated cases in 1989, 1997 and 1999.

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