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Disgraced property developer Cathal O’Connor told the Sligo County Council chief executive he was “110 percent confident” of councillors voting through a development plan close to what he wanted – a “developer-led” scheme.

In April O’Connor was sentenced to two years in prison after assaulting three teenage boys at a Sligo business park in 2024.

Records released to The Ditch under freedom of information legislation show O’Connor spent years pushing Sligo County Council’s chief executive Martin Lydon to rezone land in his favour – despite repeated warnings that it risked triggering government intervention.

In December 2025 O’Connor wrote to Lydon telling him that the housing crisis made it “reasonable and indeed necessary” for the planning system to favour people like him with the land and funding to build houses.

‘I am 110% confident that what councillors vote through will be better’

Cathal O’Connor corresponded with Sligo County Council chief executive Martin Lydon over a period of at least four years and lobbied Sligo County Council at least 14 times, according to the lobbying registry.

In one exchange in April 2024 O’Connor called the chief executive’s report on the council’s draft development plan – the CDP – "the most shocking and detrimental knife in the back of Sligo’s growth ever”.

Ten days later O’Connor wrote to Lydon again, four days after councillors first voted to approve a rezoning of land in Strandhill that would benefit O’Connor and three days before a second vote confirmed it.

“I am 110% confident that what councillors vote through will be better” than the council’s draft plan, he wrote.

At a council meeting on 30 September, 2024 chief executive Lydon told the chamber he had received an email from a developer using the same language being used by councillors.

He said the council’s elected members could either pass a development plan or it could choose to make a developer-led plan.

"You can… try your best to prevent housing but I won’t stand for it,"O’Connor wrote to Lydon that morning – hours before councillors were due to vote on the county’s development plan.

Councillors then voted to rezone several pieces of land – 303 of 308 proposed amendments were adopted, 40 against the recommendations of the planning regulator.

At least eight of these were tied to O’Connor or his companies including three in Ballysadare proposed by councillor Michael Clarke and two in Strandhill, previously reported by The Ditch.

On November 19 2024, he sent an email saying he would be “holding people accountable, publicly” and told Lydon “you have ruined the future growth of Sligo.” He added he would call for the resignation of a council official "early next year”.

Lydon replied later the next day. He confirmed the council had zoned more than 80 hectares of land above what was required to meet Sligo’s housing allocation. “I understand that all the lands that were the subject of submissions from yourself were zoned as you had requested,” he wrote.

O’Connor later told Leydon that the plan should be developer led.

In December 2025 he wrote to Lydon to tell him that zoning decisions shouldn’t, “in an ideal world,” be developer-led but because of the housing crisis it should.

Sligo County Council declined to comment. O’Connor could not be reached.

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