A community leader at Dale Farm tried to get an illegal site authorised in Hertfordshire while pleading for green belt homes at Crays Hill.

Gypsy Council member Patrick Egan, 40, said his family had to stay at the Twin Oaks site, in Ridge, because they had "nowhere else to go".

The same argument was used during Dale Farm appeals.

Builder Egan, who told an inquiry he earned up to £1,500 a week, paid £20,000 cash for the green belt at Herts with two other travellers in September 2000.

They built a 12-plot site for relatives including members of the Gore, Flynn, Sheridan, Gammell, Slattery and Quilligan families, plus himself, wife Margaret and children William, ten, and Shannon, nine.

He also had an address in Seven Sisters Road, Tottenham, and an office address in Southwark Street, London.

His firms included 1st Home Front, International Paving, First Class Painting Services and Classic Paving and Landscaping, with its own website.

Mr Egan, whose jobs included renovating HMS Belfast, working at London's Iranian embassy and selling three-piece suites, told a 2002 public inquiry Twin Oaks was developed following years of roadside evictions.

He used the argument in the Echo when Dale Farm was expanded in 2002.

On behalf of the illegally camped travellers at Dale Farm, Mr Egan, calling himself Patrick Gore, said his community owned the land.

"How can you earn a living if you're not tied to one place? Our children need to go to school. How can we do that if we are constantly being moved?" he said in a May 2002 article.

Similar arguments were used at the first Dale Farm public inquiry in 2003, where Margaret Gore, along with children William and Shannon, were appellants living with her sister. She said she was Mr Egan's cousin.

In May 2003, Mr Egan's efforts eventually won a two-year reprieve for the travelling community at Dale Farm from Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott.

Mrs Gore said in the Echo: "I have two small children who are getting a school education at the moment. We would never get that on the road."

While still battling Hertsmere Council for Twin Oaks in 2004, Egan applied from the Tottenham address to use Dale Farm as an operating centre for a goods vehicle.

He later paid £60,000 cash for the most impressive home at Dale Farm, known as Dale Farm Cottage, which already had planning permission.

Then, without planning permission, he divided the cottage's garden into three illegal plots and mobile homes were erected.

Mrs Gore moved into one - after selling her original illegal Dale Farm plot for £25,000.

In January, 2005, after a failed High Court bid, a £130,000 eviction saw Twin Oaks cleared.

Afterwards Egan told the Hillingdon Times the travellers were homeless.

He said: "We have all split up.

"People are staying with friends at the moment while I search for a new piece of land to buy."

But he already owned Dale Farm.

Yet Mr Egan assured the Echo he has never owned land at Dale Farm and said the cottage belonged to his son.

He said he was divorced and there were often mistakes in planning appeal paperwork.

But he added: "I have stayed at Dale Farm, but it is my family that owns places there."