Secretary did not know of any bill

A £25,000 cheque drawn on the Fianna Fail leader's allowance bank account which ended up in a Guinness & Mahon account that benefited Mr Charles Haughey could not have been for the payment of any bill his private secretary knew about, the tribunal heard.

Ms Eileen Foy, Mr Haughey's private secretary from 1982 to his retirement as Taoiseach and Fianna Fail party leader, agreed with counsel for the tribunal that the cheque which was made out to cash and lodged in an Amiens Investments Ltd account in Guinness & Mahon could not have been for the payment of any bill she would have known about.

Ms Foy, who helped administer the party leader's allowance from 1977 to 1992, said she had never heard of Amiens, had never been in Guinness & Mahon bank and had never given a cheque to Mr Des Traynor, who administered the Amiens account.

Normally she dealt with bank business relating to the party leader's allowance and prepared cheques for expenses covered by the allowance. She would often fill in the date, the payee and the amount to be paid in words and letters. She also frequently got Mr Bertie Ahern to sign blank cheques, which would later be filled in by her.

The completed cheques and accompanying invoices would then be presented to Mr Haughey for his signature and his approval. However, in relation to the £25,000 cheque in question, she had a doubt whether the word "cash" was in her handwriting.

Ms Foy told the tribunal she commenced employment with Fianna Fail in 1977 as secretary to the head of research who was at the time responsible for the administration of the leader's allowance. As secretary she did "a certain amount" of the clerical administrative work relating to the allowance.

When Fianna Fail went into government after the 1977 election, she became secretary to a number of backbench TDs and senators but continued to help administer the allowance.

In autumn 1979, when Mr Haughey replaced Mr Jack Lynch as party leader and Taoiseach, Mr Sean Moore TD became chief whip. Ms Foy was asked by Mr Haughey to become secretary to Mr Moore and she agreed. When Fianna Fail went into opposition in 1982, Ms Foy began to work as a private secretary to Mr Haughey and remained in that capacity until his retirement as Taoiseach and leader of Fianna Fail a decade later, continuing to work on the administration of the leader's allowance during that time.

The allowance was administered through current account 30208062 in AIB, Lower Baggot Street. Ms Foy was not a signatory to the account, but was responsible for keeping the cheque books and preparing cheques for signature. She kept details of all the cheques in a ledger in which she would note the date, the payee, the sum and the purpose of the cheque. However, she no longer had access to those files.

Ms Foy said that if she had been asked to make a cheque out for cash she would have been given a specific reason for it. However, she was not aware of any bill which would account for the £25,000 cheque to cash which ended up in the Amiens account.