At the opening of yesterday's proceedings, the former Taoiseach, Mr Charles Haughey, apologised for confused evidence he gave at the conclusion of Wednesday's sitting.
He may, he said, have been fatigued as it was near the end of that two-hour session, but having reflected on the matter overnight he could now say conclusively he did not know he had bank accounts in Guinness & Mahon bank (G & M) in the 1970s and 1980s, until told about them by the Moriarty tribunal.
The tribunal has spent two days asking Mr Haughey about the accounts, but he has been unable to lend any assistance. Huge amounts of money passed through the accounts but Mr Haughey says he has no idea where they came from.
At times yesterday Mr Haughey rested his head on one fist as he waited for yet another question from Mr John Coughlan SC, for the tribunal. He seemed tired but nevertheless frequently contested assumptions being made by the tribunal barrister.
One G & M account, opened in 1979, had £1.2 million lodged to it during the following seven years. During his time as Taoiseach in 1982, from March to December, £168,000 was lodged. He knew nothing of this at the time, he said.
A second account opened in 1982 in his name and that of Mr Harry Boland (his former school and college friend and partner in Haughey Boland & Co) had a total of £229,000 lodged to it during its two-year existence. Mr Boland has said he never knew of the account's existence until told of it by the tribunal; this was Mr Haughey's evidence, too.
It was a loan account. The late Mr Des Traynor, who was de facto chief executive of G & M at the time, presumably opened the account. Mr Traynor was articled to Mr Haughey at Haughey Boland and was a close friend of both founding partners. Why he should open an account in both men's names, on the face of it creating a liability for them, remains a mystery. Mr Haughey declined an invitation to describe this as improper behaviour by the late banker.
A third G & M account in Mr Haughey's name, opened in 1983, had £180,000 lodged to it that year. Some of this money came from the late Mr P.V. Doyle. A fourth account, open for one month in 1981, had £74,996 lodged to it.
What seems to have happened is that prior to the closure of Mr Haughey's accounts in AIB in early 1980, Mr Traynor opened an account in G & M and began funding Mr Haughey's lavish lifestyle from this account. Drawings from the AIB account during 1979 were much reduced.
Mr Traynor did not tell AIB in 1979 that Mr Haughey had another bank account or that £100,000 had been lodged to it during 1979. At the time this was about 10 times a TD's salary. During settlement negotiations with AIB, Mr Traynor warned his fellow bankers that they couldn't get blood from a stone.
Likewise Mr Haughey, in his discussions with AIB during 1979, misled it as to his financial situation. However, Mr Haughey says that when he told AIB in September 1979 that he had no bank accounts other than those at AIB, he was telling the truth as he knew it. Likewise when he was meeting AIB officials in 1979, he had no idea that as-yet-unidentified donors had given him in excess of £100,000 during those months.
When Mr Coughlan sought to get Mr Haughey's view on these matters, he tried to belittle the point. It sometimes happened in life, he said, that enormous significance was given to matters in retrospect, which hardly registered in the minds of those involved at the time.