Veteran politician still no pushover

Well, what did you expect him to do? Come out with his hands in the air and say "guilty, your honour"? In fact, Ray Burke did offer something along these lines during his latest spell at the Flood tribunal this week, but it was in relation to a minor matter and was quickly taken back.

For the man they called Rambo didn't come to Dublin Castle to roll over like a kitten. The veteran of thousands of bruising encounters with the media and political opponents hasn't turned into a push-over in his retirement. Four years after his departure from the Dβil, the bluster and self-belief are undimmed.

Mr Burke's verdict on his tribunal experiences was summed up by one of his associates shortly after he finished his evidence on Thursday. "Sure, they've turned up lots of money, but where's the corruption? Even if he did get his house for free, where's the corruption?" He has a point: it's one thing to grill the witness in the box, and lampoon him outside it. It's altogether another matter to make any charges against him stick in a courtroom. The tribunal reports, when they are published next year, will undoubtedly come down on the former minister like a ton of bricks, but what then? After all, Mr Burke is already in the political wilderness. His erstwhile friends have deserted him. His name is mud. And he doesn't seem to care a whit.

You'd almost feel sorry for the man. Last Thursday, as the rest of the country was gearing itself up for the big match, there was Ray wearily reciting the amount of co-operation he has given the tribunal. Four long years spent dredging up personal and bank documents, being interviewed by lawyers, reading tribunal transcripts. Four long years in the maw of the tribunal monster, and still no prospect of escape.

But then, just as you reach for the hanky, he goes and trips up again. He blames AIB for failing to find records of accounts he held more quickly. He says he told the bank in 1998 that he had overseas accounts in London and the Isle of Man, but the bank said he hadn't. Eventually, he was shown to be correct, and the accounts were located.

But if you believed you had an account in the Isle of Man in 1998, asks Patricia Dillon SC, for the tribunal, why didn't you tell us? Why didn't we hear about this until last year? If the tribunal had this information, it might have found out sooner about Tom Brennan's £50,000 (€63,490) payment to the account in 1982.

Ray explains that "as soon as I had the details I provided them to the tribunal". But this is the same lame formula he served up last March to explain his "failure of recollection" in relation to offshore payments he had failed to disclose.

Then you remember all his previous lapses of memory, and his unique way with words. How he told the Dβil in 1997 that James Gogarty's £30,000 was the "largest single contribution" he had received, when he got far bigger sums. How he told the Dβil he had no overseas bank account; now we know he had five. And how he completely failed to tell the tribunal about £125,000 in offshore payments from Brennan and McGowan, until the tribunal caught him and the two builders out.

With each telling, the sums of money grows. The latest revelation is that Mr Burke got £1,000 a month from the builders for seven years between 1975 and 1982. The payments were allegedly fees due to Mr Burke for selling houses on behalf of Brennan and McGowan but if so, why the round-sum figures? And how could he find time to sell thousands of houses when he was a minister for most of this time? Back in 1975, £1,000 went a long way. A research assistant in UCC was on £1,050 a year, a new BMW cost just over £3,000 and the price of The Irish Times was just 10p. Mr Burke's own salary as a TD was less than £2,000 a year.

In 1982, by which time the builders had coughed up £85,000 in monthly payments, the money pipeline to Mr Burke was moved offshore. The pretence of auctioneering fees was dropped, and massive "political donations" were dropped into Mr Burke's account in Jersey.

From all sources, the running total of identified payments to Mr Burke now stands at over £350,000 - or over £750,000 in today's money. But the real value of these contributions is much greater - after all, Mr Burke sold his house, which the tribunal believes he got for nothing, for £3 million last year.

The great mystery is where all this money went. Mr Burke has a comfortable lifestyle, but he never indulged in the extravagances of a Charles Haughey or a Liam Lawlor. He ran a sophisticated and expensive political machine in north Dublin, fuelled by money and drink. "Ray could spot a thirsty man in a bar at 50 paces, and it didn't matter to him whether it was friend or foe," says one former colleague.

In various pubs throughout north Dublin, Mr Burke used to run tabs so that his henchmen could buy drinks for the locals. He was a generous contributor to local causes and employed full-time constituency staff. And then, of course, as he repeated umpteen times last week, £117,000 remains unspent in a "political fund" which Ray keeps promising to divvy up.

For all the attention he receives, Mr Burke remains an enigmatic character.

What friendships he had were forged in his early years, and he was close to very few of his political colleagues, even in Fianna Fβil. Once he resigned, these ties were severed without tears on either side.

Mr Burke could be charming and gregarious in company, but there was always a certain distance about him. As one journalist recalls, "he was very 'hail fellow, well met' but he wouldn't get that pally with you".

His father Paddy Burke came up from Mayo and was elected a TD in 1944. Ray, who was born six months before, was soon pounding the constituency beat with his father. He picked his friends, Brennan and McGowan included, from "the Mayo set" and followed Paddy onto the county council and, in 1973, into the Dβil.

Mr Burke's business relationship with the two builders dates from the late 1960s, when he took out an auctioneer's licence to sell the houses they were putting up around north Dublin. On the council, he was active in rezoning land, much of it owned by Brennan and Mr McGowan.

In 1974, Ray Burke became the first modern-day politician to be snared in the media's investigations into planning controversies when the Sunday Independent linked him to a payment from a Brennan and McGowan company. It was to be the start of 30 years of allegation and denial.

On each occasion until his resignation in 1997, Mr Burke emerged unscathed, though he never managed to douse the rumours that dogged him.

A few holidays, a round of golf, some cricket - retirement must seem drab for the former high-flier.

His prospects of employment, if he wants any, are poor. He will shortly endure the agony of the tribunal report. Sometime next year, or even later, he faces a fifth and final round of questioning by the tribunal over the Rennicks payment he received in 1989.

And yet, there he was on Thursday, striding out of the tribunal with a broad grin on his face and, seemingly, not a care in the world. Well, after all, what did you expect?