Miriam Lord at Dublin Castle:And there we were, thinking the only palace in Drumcondra belonged to the Archbishop of Dublin.
Think again.
Two lots of money, adding up to a tasty £80,000 - or more than €100,000 in today's money - were set aside in 1994 to extend and decorate the mini-Versailles that would serve as the official residence of Bartholomew Ahern, leader of Fianna Fáil and soon-to-be-taoiseach.
That's pure daft.
But Celia Larkin has the receipts, even if she can't remember much about the bizarre sequence of financial acrobatics required to fund the project.
She had enough on her plate, "administering the expenditure".
With hindsight, it might have been more sensible to bring the Office of Public Works in on the job.
But Celia Larkin has the receipts. You could sense she was eager to produce them for the tribunal yesterday but, sadly, she wasn't asked.
Back to the £80,000. Some £30,000 of it came from Manchester businessman Michael Wall, who was purchasing a house and then going to rent it to his pal, finance minister Bertie Ahern.
On his occasional trips to Dublin, Wall would be able to stay in his house. In the fullness of time, Bertie would buy it from him, which is what eventually happened.
Given the unusual circumstances, Celia Larkin took extra care when locating the property for Michael. After all, in the not too distant future, it would be owned and lived in by her "life partner" and, presumably, Celia.
44 Beresford came on the market. It was perfect, except for one major flaw in Ms Larkin's eyes: it needed a bigger dining area in the form of an extension. She didn't think of looking for a bigger house.
Michael Wall, who would only be lodging there on the odd night, undertook to pay for it.
Ordinary folk might think it a bit cheeky, on the face of it, to ask the man who was shelling out on a new home for them to pay for a conservatory as well.
But neither Celia nor her life partner appeared to find this strange. There is no evidence of them offering to pick up the tab for their personal renovations.
Things happened fast. So fast they were wiped from Celia's memory until a few months ago.
It was a hectic, momentous weekend in early December for the civil servant turned beautician. On the Friday, there was Bertie's annual fundraiser in Dublin.
"I booked the venue, organised the menu, organised the entertainment and did the table arrangements," said Celia, remembering the first leg of her exciting marathon with ease.
It was December 2nd. Henry Murphy, counsel for the tribunal, asked her if she knew then that Ahern was about to become taoiseach on December 6th.
Cool and composed, she shot Henry a withering glance and dripped, "Of course."
But the next day is a bit of a blur. In fact, in her previous communications with the inquiry, Ms Larkin managed three different accounts of how Michael Wall gave a briefcase full of cash to Bertie.
Celia, wrapped in soft pink wool and an icy reserve, didn't take kindly when this was pointed out to her.
"Three different accounts," she repeated to the lawyer. "Explain!" (Maybe she was confused, and thought it was something to do with the number of bank accounts she was running for Bertie.) In time-honoured tribunal tradition, Celia was now into "best recollection" territory and relying upon it with such an affronted air of certainty that it belied the unsatisfactory nature of her replies.
She sighed about trying hard to piece together the chain of events. They came to her recently in a blinding flash - called Bertie - who reminded her that the weekend in question was when he nearly became taoiseach. Suddenly, everything fell into place and she remembered.
It was a busy Saturday afternoon in St Luke's. Michael Wall came and met Bertie in the front office. Celia was in Mrs Doyle mode, running in and out, "offering cups of tea". At one point, she saw Bertie taking money into the back office, and there was more cash on the table.
It was definitely sterling. She remembers this now.
The cash was in bundles. There was so much it took Bertie a few trips to take it next door to the safe. She asked what the money was for, and the men explained it was for the conservatory.
That made perfect sense to Celia.
That evening, she went out for a few drinks with Michael and Bertie and some of the Drumcondra mafia, but can't remember where. The next day, Bertie asked her to go to his office on Monday morning, take a briefcase of money to the bank and lodge it in an account in her name.
Their solicitor friend, now deceased, had recommended they do this during the Sunday night gathering.
What was the briefcase like? It was a hard briefcase. As finance minister, she said Bertie had lots of them in the office for holding government papers.
So off she went to the bank, conveyed by Bertie's driver. She never looked into the briefcase and had no idea how much was in it. Could have been Albanian lek, Korean won, Nepalese rupee, US dollars, for all Celia knew. Although she assumes the money was sterling.
She didn't count it. Alarmingly, the chap in the bank didn't count it in front of her either. She hasn't any receipt to show what exchange rate she got. She simply got back an empty briefcase and proceeded with the second leg of her task: transferring £50,000 from Bertie's account - he was a recent convert to the banking system - to another new account in her name.
The £50,000 from Bertie was for the big stuff - soft furnishings, various odds and ends, "general decoration and upgrading of the house".
The smaller amount would take care of the conservatory.
Did she think it a normal way of doing business, mused Henry Murphy, that a finance minister should be given £30,000 in cash to do up a house that hadn't yet been bought? Er, no.
But here's the scariest bit. In her desire to create a palace for herself and her life partner, the unwitting Celia Larkin could have sparked a crisis of catastrophic proportions in the Irish financial markets.
Think of it. In she goes to Bertie's office, which is full of briefcases. One of them would have had details of the following month's January budget. What if she had picked up the wrong briefcase and given it to the man in the AIB? She never looked inside.
Funny thing is, after going to all the bother of depositing the money in readiness for the spun-gold curtains and platinum-plated taps and whatever else would go into Drumcondra's second palace, Bertie turned around the very next month and asked her to withdraw all of the fifty grand for him. In cash. No explanation given. She can hardly remember it now.
"Bertie dealt in cash. I think he felt more comfortable with it."
The gallery burst out laughing. A very serious development where Bertie's precious public credibility is concerned.
He must have been anxious to get his hands on it, because he drove her to the bank on O'Connell Street himself. Curious that, as Bertie is on record saying he let his driving licence lapse, because he had a driver since 1987 - including his time in opposition.
The crowd in the gallery were riveted, sitting forward, big smiles on their faces.
So Bertie is outside with the engine idling, while his partner goes inside and gets the cash. Celia can't remember if it was in a parcel or a bag. No point in asking if Bertie was wearing a balaclava, because she can't recall that much.
Her mind is a complete blank after that. She can't remember what happened after they got back to St Luke's.
All she can say is that the money was used on the house. She has the receipts.
It's sad, but she never did get to live in it.