The unravelling of John Gilligan’s grandiose plan to live like a lord
Despite all the scheming, Gilligan’s land and property empire has been taken from him now by the courts, writes Conor Feehan
CONVICTED drug dealer John Gilligan and his family spent 20 years fighting through the courts trying to hold on to property amassed from his criminal activities.
But last Wednesday they finally lost a Supreme Court appeal over proceeds of crime orders.
The five-judge court said the Gilligans had not established a previous Supreme Court decision of 2008 came within the necessary rare or exceptional circumstance in which a final judgment may be set aside.
It would have been necessary for them to show, through no fault of their own, they had been subject of a breach of constitutional rights, Ms Justice Elizabeth Dunne said on behalf of the court.
“There is nothing extraneous in the circumstances of this case going to the very root of the fair and constitutional administration of justice which would necessitate the setting aside of the judgment of the Supreme Court of 2008,’’ she said.
But an investigation into how Gilligan managed to amass the portfolio shows that an utter disregard for the norms of civil society was evident from the start.
The Gilligans rode roughshod over the planning process from day one. It was 1987 when John and Geraldine Gilligan moved into a small bungalow in the townland of Mucklon, near Enfield.
Little did anyone know at the time that Factory John was about to put Mucklon on the map and into the headlines.
Kildare County Council’s planning department were also about to get a major headache.
In a thorough examination of the various planning applications made by the Gilligans since they first bought in Mucklon, there is evidence of lofty ambitions.
The first plot of land they bought was in the area where Geraldine still lives, and is one of the houses which the Criminal Assets Bureau can now lay claim to following the Supreme Court ruling of last week.
This was also the house to where Gilligan fled in recent months following his return from the UK, where he had been hiding out after being shot and wounded in 2014.
The Gilligans bought this plot 30 years ago, in the summer of 1987, with the grant of transfer between the previous owners and Geraldine being registered in official records on September 7 of that year.
The first planning application the Gilligans made was before that transfer was registered, on June 25.
They wanted to demolish the existing house on the site and replace it with a two-storey complete with a sauna, jacuzzi, sun room and games room as well as five bed- rooms. The application was made in the name of Geraldine Gilligan, who gave an address at the time as Corduff Avenue in Dublin.
This Corduff property is also in CAB’s sights since the Supreme Court ruling last week. The Gilligans rented it from the local authority between 1977 and 1996, and then bought it outright for £7,000.
On the planning application details for Mucklon, Geraldine identifies her occupation as a clothing importer who intended to transfer her business to the Enfield area. Her clothing interest is possibly a connection back to her days as a young woman working as a line operative in an underwear factory in Ballyfermot.
But her interest in horses and her dream equestrian centre is hinted at even at this early stage.
On the planning application, she wanted an existing building on the site to be retained as stables.
Geraldine Gilligan has long had an interest in horses. Old friends of hers remember Geraldine at the age of 15 riding bareback on a piebald pony up Loch Conn Road in Ballyfermot to meet her then-boyfriend John.
The planning application notice for their project was printed in newspapers on Friday, June 19, 1987.
Apart from being described as a clothing importer, Geraldine’s future ambitions in the equestrian world are also mentioned. “She also has a keen interest in horses and this six-acre site is large enough to enable her to keep horses,” an agent noted on the planning application.
Geraldine also stated that the existing house on the site was “too small for her needs”.
Although Mucklon is remote and rural, there are some houses in the vicinity. The main occupations in the area are based around agriculture.
None of the locals made any objections to the Gilligans’s plans for their 414-square metre home that would dominate the landscape. Regardless of this, the plans for the house were refused by Kildare County Council.
The council refused permission on the grounds that the house would “consolidate a trend towards piecemeal residential developments in an unserviced rural area”, and also on the grounds that “the development was not associated with agricultural land use”.
But the refusal did not stop the Gilligans. They appealed the decision to An Bord Pleanala that September. At this stage, John Gilligan was amassing a fortune from crime. ‘Factory John’ was ripping off warehouses, robbing in bulk and selling on anything that would get a price.
But in an effort to sway the planning authorities to their way of thinking, the Gilligans said in their appeal that they intended to “enter into beef farming” and that they had purchased an additional 26 acres within the same folio and that there was an option on an additional six acres also being considered.
But John Gilligan’s future was to be as a drugs baron, not a beef baron.
The appeal against the council’s decision not to grant permission for the house is the first hint that the Gilligans were going to expand their operations.
The idea for Jessbrook — the state-of-the-art equestrian facility — had been conceived.
But An Bord Pleanala upheld the original decision made by the council and the Gilligans never got to build their dream home with five bedrooms, a sauna, and enough space for the gangster to enjoy the trappings of his ill-gotten wealth.
However, the Gilligans were determined to find a way.
In 1990 they applied for permission to retain a bathroom that had already been built, as well as permission to build a block with eight stables behind their house.
Again, there were no objections from locals, and Kildare County Council deemed it fine.
The Gilligans received permission for this application in April 1990.
At this stage, John Gilligan was serving a four-year sentence, and would not get out of jail until 1993.
When he was released, he applied to the Irish Permanent for a €30,000 mortgage, which was granted that December.
In February 1994, the Gilligans drew down €20,000 out of that €30,000.
That money was all paid back by the following August, less than six months later. Every other transaction in relation to buying lands and building property at the Mucklon site, including the purchase of the original house and the building of Jessbrook, was done with the Gilligans’ own reserves, not with borrowings.
While the planning files show the stable block as a separate building from the house, more recent aerial photographs suggest it was connected to the house either at the time it was built or sometime afterwards.
This does not seem to have been questioned by Kildare County Council, and informed sources who have investigated Gilligan say the ‘stable block’ is now a bank of bedrooms, yet there is no evidence that the Gilligans ever applied for planning permission to change the use of the building.
When asked about the stable block being joined to the house, Kildare County Council told the Sunday Independent that under planning and development regulations, certain agricultural developments have exemptions, subject to limitations and conditions, from requiring planning permission.
However, when pressed on the issue Kildare County Council conceded that it was not able to trace any exemptions in this case and that no query or application by the Gilligans to join the stable block to the house could be found.
Similarly, when we raised questions about the stable block being converted to living accommodation, the council said that under the planning and development regulations, there are exemptions for extensions to houses and the conversion of sheds and stores to forming part of a house.
Again, when pressed on the issue, the council conceded that it was not able to trace any exemptions in this case and that no query or application by the Gilligans to convert the stables to living accommodation could be found.
Five years after getting planning permission to build the stables behind the house, and seemingly turning them into bedrooms, John and Geraldine’s ambitious plans for the massive Jessbrook equestrian centre were submitted to Kildare County Council.
It was a move that would take them from small-time local operators to the big league — if they could pull it off.
Planning application 95/722 was submitted in April 1995. It was for a horse training arena and ancillary works.
There was also an application to demolish a ‘substandard’ two-sto- rey house on the site near the road, and build a new dormer bungalow gate lodge.
At this stage, Geraldine Gilligan boasted a holding of 60 acres at Mucklon, and described herself as a “horse trainer and breeder”.
Despite its mammoth size, the extra traffic it would bring to the area, the noise that a public address system would add to the area, and the glare that floodlighting would bring — nobody in the area objected to the planning application for Jessbrook.
It didn’t matter, John and Geraldine Gilligan had made up their minds, and they started construction on Jessbrook even while the planners in Kildare County Council tried to get to grips with the scale of the project.
In the baking-hot summer of 1995, locals not only remember the tar melting on the roads with the heat of the sun, they also remember convoys of concrete mixers travelling to Mucklon to lay the foundations for Jessbrook.
In September 1995, Kildare Council sought some extra information from the Gilligans in relation to their plan, and made some interesting notes based on a site visit to Mucklon.
In a letter from the council to the Gilligans dated September 14, 1995, it is noted that during an inspection of the site: “it contains a considerable amount of unauthorised development including an outdoor exercise arena and ancillary facilities” including a control box, lighting and a PA system, as well as the upgrading of a stable block.
“It was further noted that the two-storey house for which permission is being sought to carry out its demolition has already been demolished and the site cleared in an unauthorised manner,” the letter added.
Coincidentally, the letter was written a day after Gilligan attacked Sunday Independent journalist Veronica Guerin at Mucklon when she called to ask him about the drug lords who were making vast sums of cash and living lavish lifestyles with no apparent source of legitimate income.
Gilligan’s masterplan was starting to unravel before it was ever completed.
In a reply to the letter from the council on October 30, 1995 on behalf of Geraldine Gilligan, the architect said the two-storey house was “demolished for safety and security reasons”.
“We apologise on Mrs Gilligan’s behalf over this mistake,” he added.
On February 5, 1996, Kildare County Council wrote to Geraldine Gilligan granting permission for Jessbrook, subject to 10 conditions, but work was already well under way on the project.
While early photographs of the completed Jessbrook show it occupying a piece of land consistent with the planning application, later photographs show a section was added to it.
Again, there is nothing in the planning files of Kildare County Council that shows planning permission was sought or given for this addition.
The following June, Gilligan’s gang murdered Sunday Independent journalist Veronica Guerin.
Her killing was to spark the formation of the Criminal Assets Bureau which targeted the Gilligans among others.
Suddenly, all eyes were on Factory John and his gang. While gardai were not successful in charging Gilligan for the murder of Veronica Guerin, he was convicted on drug trafficking charges and spent 18 years in prison.
Gang member Brian Meehan is currently serving life for Veronica’s killing. He was the man riding the motorbike which drew level with her car before the gunman opened fire.
Gardai believe that Patrick ‘Dutchy’ Holland, who has since died, was the trigger man.
Jessbrook would later be seized from Gilligan and rented to the Office of Public Works, who used it as a storage facility before it was eventually sold for more than €500,000. At the peak of the boom, it would have been valued at €5m.
In a bizarre twist, the person who bought Jessbrook, James Buckley, renovated it as a state-ofthe-art equestrian facility before putting it back on the market.
But he could not sell it as a going concern due to outstanding planning issues with Kildare County Council.
One avenue he was reported as pursuing was to dismantle it and its wide-span metal framing and sell it to someone who would then erect it elsewhere, possibly abroad.
Thirty years after Gilligan put the Jessbrook dream on the map, it might be erased from the landscape one day soon.
It would be as if he was never there.
‘The Gilligans rented the Corduff house from the local authority between 1977 and 1996, and then bought it outright for £7,000...’