Any irregularities in his personal finances were the result of his separation from his wife in the early 1990s, Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, said at the weekend.
Seeming relaxed, and at times slightly exasperated, Mr Ahern discussed the Mahon tribunal with journalists who covered his visit to the Irish College on Saturday. During an impromptu press conference in the courtyard of the college, Mr Ahern regretted that the tribunal is preventing him from doing other things. "Of course it's a bit tough trying to make time available, to read," he said.
"If you're another individual you'd have plenty of time to do that, and I just don't have the time to do that."
Marian Finucane of RTÉasked Mr Ahern if his financial transactions in the early 1990s weren't "bamboozling and bewildering" to the public, whether "if somebody walked in here and threw 30 grand down on the table, you'd remark on it?" "You would," Mr Ahern replied.
"And I have too. What I must do in the tribunal is answer the question . . . "
Mr Ahern said that except for the period when he was separating from his wife, his finances were in perfect order.
"Effectively, in one year on the other side of my separation of the High Court decision, my separation in November/December 1992, up until the end of 1994, that year I was again opening my accounts.
"I was again going into the property market to rent a house and then to purchase a house. I did that in conjunction with friends. All of the other years - maybe a bit into 1995 - but all of the other years there was nothing strange.
"If I wasn't going through a High Court separation at that stage, I would have been using the accounts with Miriam," Mr Ahern continued.
"Friends wouldn't be giving me money, I wouldn't be renting a house. It happened clearly because I was separated; and if I wasn't separated, nothing would have happened and it wouldn't have been anything strange. I accept that if I wasn't separated, none of the three things would have happened, and that's the reality."
Though many couples separate, their accounts are not "trawled through and examined and investigated" in the way his have been, he said. If they were, "I think you would see that people who are separated have to do different things at different times to survive and to move on and I did the same. And thankfully for them, they never had to go through what I had to go through, and that's the reality."
He said he has "no idea" how long the tribunal process will continue. "If I'm annoyed at anything, it's just I'll be an old man and still dealing with it," he said. "It's a long time."