Ahern denies he thought Gilmartin 'shifty' or 'dishonest'

Description of Gilmartin: The Taoiseach has rejected his own counsel's description of Mr Tom Gilmartin as "shifty" and "dishonest".

Mr Ahern told Mr Hugh O'Neill SC, for Mr Gilmartin, that he did not regard Mr Gilmartin as either shifty or dishonest.

However, he denied that a decision had been made to do a "hatchet job" on Mr Gilmartin when his lawyer, Mr Conor Maguire SC, was questioning the developer.

Mr O'Neill said the Taoiseach's lawyers had "trawled" back to 1978 and a court case in Cavan in which a judge had criticised Mr Gilmartin in a land case. He asked the witness if he had "orchestrated" this trawl.

Mr Ahern said he hadn't orchestrated any campaign against Mr Gilmartin. Asked if he had anything to do with it, he said people had checked the records and found this case. He hadn't known about it.

Mr O'Neill asked if the Taoiseach now wanted to withdraw the assertion that Mr Gilmartin was shifty and had given dishonest evidence. Mr Ahern replied that he never said this. He wasn't going to withdraw something someone else had said. Mr Gilmartin had changed his story and moved his evidence around "many times".

Asked if he would dissociate himself from his counsel's remarks about Mr Gilmartin, Mr Ahern said he hadn't said the words.

But Mr O'Neill said the cross-examination of Mr Gilmartin that had been conducted on the Taoiseach's behalf had tried to "destroy" his client.

Mr O'Neill questioned the Taoiseach at length about the meeting Mr Gilmartin said he had with Government ministers, including Mr Ahern, in Leinster House in February 1989.

Mr Ahern said he didn't believe that a meeting of the Cabinet or a sub-committee had taken place, but there could have been a few people meeting up for "chit-chat".

Counsel said that in 1989 Mr Gilmartin was telling "practically everyone" about his problems, so it was "extremely implausible" that he hadn't told Mr Ahern that Mr Liam Lawlor and George Redmond were looking for money off him.

However, Mr Ahern replied that it was "far simpler than that". Mr Gilmartin had difficulties with a tender he had made to buy land from Dublin Corporation and he, Mr Ahern, had helped him "out of the kindness of my heart".

If Mr Gilmartin had told him about Mr Lawlor looking for money, he would have remembered it, Mr Ahern said.

In earlier evidence, Mr Ahern denied Mr Gilmartin's claim that he had asked the developer for a donation. He said he would never asked someone for money for himself or Fianna Fáil. It wasn't his practice. As a principle, he wouldn't even ask his best friends for money.

He had no recollection of discussing with Mr Gilmartin his payment to Mr Pádraig Flynn. He could well have asked Mr Gilmartin if he had given Mr Flynn a contribution, but that was entirely different from asking for a donation himself.

Asked for his reaction to the size of the £50,000 Mr Gilmartin paid to Mr Flynn, the witness said it was a large donation, although it would not have been the largest donation made in 1989. "If you represent Dublin Central you don't get many people floating around with that kind of money."