MAHON TRIBUNAL IMPACT:THE MAHON tribunal's inquiry into Bertie Ahern's personal finances overshadowed the last 20 months of his political career.
The inquiry began following a statement to the tribunal by property developer Tom Gilmartin in which he alleged he had been told of payments to Ahern in 1989 and the early 1990s.
Gilmartin said he had been told in 1992 by another property developer, Owen O'Callaghan, that he had paid Ahern £50,000 in 1989 and £30,000 on a later occasion. The payments were linked to the Quarryvale project, which both developers were at the time promoting.
Ahern and O'Callaghan told the tribunal that Gilmartin's allegation was untrue.
When the tribunal began private inquiries into Ahern's finances to see if there was any trace of such payments, it found that lodgements totalling a multiple of his declared income had been made in the 1993 to 1995 period.
The tribunal proceeded to query Ahern as to the source of these lodgements, first writing to him in October 2004. Ahern's responses were slow in coming, piecemeal and incomplete. By late 2005 the tribunal was homing in on a number of lodgements that would subsequently become the subject of public hearings.
Ahern failed to meet a November 2005 deadline for the provision of explanations and in March 2006 the tribunal threatened him that if he did not supply the requested explanations, it would summons him and question him in public.
At this time the public did not know about the tribunal's inquiries.
In April 2006, Ahern informed the tribunal that he had accumulated more than £50,000 in cash savings in the period to 1993, and that he had received two large "dig-outs" from friends in 1993 and 1994, following the completion of his separation agreement with his wife.
He also said he had received sterling at an event in Manchester in 1994. These facts explained the large lodgements, he said.
As the tribunal's confidential inquiries continued, it discovered that Ahern's partner at the time, Celia Larkin, had made a large lodgement in December 1994 that she said was connected to a house Ahern was then about to rent from Manchester-based businessman, Michael Wall.
When the tribunal began inquiring into Ahern's relationship with Wall, it discovered that Wall had made a will in which he left the house to Ahern, and to Ahern's daughters if Ahern pre-deceased Wall.
The tribunal began to investigate whether Wall was, in fact, acting as Ahern's nominee in the purchase of the house.
In September 2006, the public first learned of the tribunal's inquiries into Ahern's finances when a report in The Irish Times disclosed that the tribunal had been told a number of persons had made payments, including cash payments, to Ahern.
A huge controversy ensued and Ahern eventually gave an interview to Bryan Dobson of RTÉ and answered questions in the Dáil.
Overall, his account seemed odd, involved a large amount of cash and contained some inherent contradictions. For example, he said he had low outgoings, £50,000 in cash savings and that his friends had given him money because they knew of his straitened circumstances.
Ahern attended a private interview with the tribunal in April 2007. In the period before that, the tribunal had examined a number of lodgements in the context of the exchange rates in operation on the dates the lodgements were made.
It found that a lodgement it had been told comprised the second dig-out and the Manchester money equated to £25,000 sterling exactly when one of the rates in use on the day was applied.
A similar exercise for the lodgement by Larkin that was said to be sterling given to Ahern by Wall, for use on the house Ahern was to rent, indicated it could not have been sterling. However, the tribunal found it was the equivalent of $45,000 exactly, when the dollar exchange rate in use on the day was applied. These points were put to Ahern at the private interview. He said the lodgements were as he had described them. He said he had not dealt in dollars.
Because it was having difficulty making sense of Ahern's financial dealings, the tribunal decided to call him to give evidence, even though there was no evidence of a payment from O'Callaghan.
Documents were circulated by the tribunal but a hearing was deferred when the Taoiseach dissolved the Dáil and called a general election. His personal finances became a major issue in the campaign when material from the circulated documents was reported in the media, including in this newspaper.
When he first came to give evidence to the tribunal after the election, in September 2007, Ahern's appearance received huge media coverage. The difficulty the tribunal had had in getting answers from him and the apparent conflict between what he told the tribunal and what the banking records indicated, became clear.
Each return to the witness box suggested more difficulties with Ahern's testimony. Polls showed that a significant percentage of the public did not find it credible. Among the matters that emerged was that one of the alleged donors to the first dig-out, Padraic O'Connor, insisted the payment was a political donation.
The tribunal's inquiries into Ahern's personal finances began to cross over into funds raised for his political activities. When asked about a £5,000 cheque lodged to his building society account, Ahern described it as a "political donation for personal use".
The tribunal extended its inquiries to accounts it was told were run for his constituency operation. It found that a £30,000 payment from one such account in 1993 had been given to Larkin to help her purchase a house.
Then, two weeks ago, evidence was heard about lodgements to Ahern's building society in 1994. Ahern had already said that the lodgements arose from his salary but his former constituency secretary, Gráinne Carruth, who had made the lodgements for him, accepted on the basis of bank records shown to her, that sterling cash must have been involved.
Carruth broke down when giving her evidence. There were immediate calls for Ahern to respond as it was in direct conflict with his evidence, but he has not yet done so. His dealings with the tribunal are likely to last for a number of months and a report, which will deal with his finances as part the Quarryvale module, may not be published until next year.