Taoiseach Bertie Ahern has told the Mahon tribunal he had "no reason" to use a bank account to deal with his income after his marital separation in 1987.
Mr Ahern took the stand at the planning inquiry this morning and is facing further questions about his personal finances. Tribunal counsel Des O'Neill told Mr Ahern the examination would focus on the savings and loans elements of his finances during a 13-month period between 1994 and 1995.
Mr O'Neill said it would also be necessary to touch on aspects of his marital separation during questioning. However, he said these inquiries were not being made out of any "prurient interest" but because each of the financial transactions in question was tied back to his separation in 1986/87.
Questioned about why he decided to conduct his business in cash after his separation, Mr Ahern told the tribunal there was "no reason" he needed to open a bank account to deal with his income.
He said he believed he and his wife, Miriam Ahern, had "about 10" accounts in their joint names prior to their separation in 1987. After they separated, his wife continued to use the accounts, but he did not.
Asked by Mr O'Neill why he did not open an account to deal with the "three separate streams" of income he then had as a minister, a TD and as lord mayor of Dublin, the Taoiseach said: "Put it the other way round - there was no reason that I should."
Mr Ahern said he received his salaries by cheque and "just walked into a bank on Dorset Street or in town and cashed the cheque".
"I was kind of known," he said. "I think there was only once in my life that I walked into a bank and they said they would not cash it for me unless I opened an account."
The Taoiseach said he did not believe he thought about the matter at the time. His wife had continued to use the joint accounts after their separation.
"I had the cheques, I needed cash and I cashed the cheques." He said "ordinary people" went into pubs all the time and cashed cheques. "It's not extraordinary."
Mr Ahern said there was "nothing in the law or the Constitution" that said he had to do otherwise. "I decided to cash my cheques, full stop."
Mr Ahern agreed that sometimes his cheques would accumulate and they would be cashed by members of his staff when they went to the bank. They were just cashed and the money would either be given to him or left back on his desk, he said.
He did not agree that the practice was unusual. In all his time in minister's offices, money had never gone missing, he said. Asked if it was correct that he had not kept a weekly, monthly or annual record of what money he had in relation to his annual salary, Mr Ahern said that "if anyone was to ask" then he would just count it.
"If you wanted to know what you had left you would just count it."
Mr Ahern said he would count what he had "a few times a year" or he would check his money "if it was Christmas time or if I needed to buy a present or whatever". He didn't check it much, but he did so "every now and again".
Mr Ahern told the tribunal his biggest bill at the time was maintenance to his wife. He would take this amount out, pay any big bills and take some for "pocket money". The rest would be put into his safe "or a drawer".
Mr O'Neill put it to Mr Ahern that the sums he kept were large in the context of what he was earning at the time, but the Taoiseach said he did not agree.
He said he had saved £20,000 in one place and £30,000 in another over "a seven or eight-year period". Mr O'Neill said that in 1993, Mr Ahern's gross annual salary was £63,184.63, the equivalent of about €80,227 today. The current salary of the Minister for Finance, Mr O'Neill said, was €214,344.
Counsel for Mr Ahern, Conor Maguire SC, disputed the figures and their relevance and said they were "a matter for an economist" and not for Mr O'Neill.
Mr Ahern agreed that the lodgements under examination by the tribunal totalled about three times his net income at that time in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
He said that in 1986/87 he served as mayor of Dublin and had an allowance for that post. The position overlapped with his appointment as Minister for Labour Affairs in early 1987.
Mr Ahern started his evidence at 10.30am in what is the first of two consecutive days of evidence for the Taoiseach.
The Fianna Fáil leader last appeared before the planning payments inquiry over four days in September.
Then, tribunal lawyers focused part of their inquiries on a number of large cash lodgements made by Mr Ahern or on his behalf during a 13-month period between 1994 and 1995 while he was minister for finance.
Barristers will again question the Taoiseach today on other aspects of his personal finances as part of the Quarryvale II module of the long-running inquiry.
Mr Ahern is being asked about two collections he has said were made for him in December 1993 and October 1994, as well as money he said he was given after a dinner in Manchester, also in 1994.
The first of the so-called dig-outs is a sum of £22,500 lodged to a savings account by Mr Ahern in December 1993. The tribunal says no back-up documentation exists to support Mr Ahern's contention that this money was a loan from a number of friends - apart from a total of £7,500.
Former Fianna Fáil fundraiser Des Richardson, has told the Mahon tribunal said he and Mr Ahern's solicitor, the late Gerard Brennan, organised the collection to help Mr Ahern settle legal bills arising from his separation.