The former head of AIB's group internal audit could not believe that the Revenue Commissioners were fully aware of the scale of the bank's non-resident deposits following assurances given by management in February 1991 that the problem with DIRT collection had been largely resolved by April 5th, 1990.
Mr Tony Spollen told the Dail Committee of Public Accounts that he was concerned because there had not been enough time to address the full extent of the bogus non-resident accounts problem, which ran into "hundreds of millions" of pounds, either before the end of the bank's accounting year on March 31st, or to comply with the tax year, which ended on April 5th.
He confirmed to Mr Pat Rabbitte that he had been shown a letter which the bank had received from Mr Tony Mac Carthaigh, senior inspector of taxes, following a meeting between the Revenue Commissioners and senior AIB executives.
What concerned him about the letter was that the bank had undertaken, in effect, to be in full compliance with legal norms on DIRT collection, literally within weeks: "We didn't say `from', we said `by' 5 April - and that's what concerned me."
He subsequently checked the bank's own minutes of the meeting and concluded that this indeed was the situation: "My concern was how could that be if we had bogus accounts on the scale of £600 million?"
Mr Rabbitte asked if the Revenue people were being misled. Mr Spollen replied: "I'm not saying they were misled, but they weren't made aware of the facts, maybe. All I'm saying is they may not have asked the question. There's a difference - and I think other institutions may have made this point as well - that they didn't volunteer information."
The bank had formed the opinion, on the basis of the meeting with the Revenue Commissioners, that no penalties would be imposed for non-compliance before that date, Mr Spollen said.
Replying to Mr Rabbitte, he admitted that he had some difficulty with the concept of an amnesty in respect of earlier indebtedness: "I needed to be sure. We were talking about a large sum of money. The potential indebtedness was extremely large."
He did not believe that there would have been an agreement at the time of the meeting if the Revenue had understood the scale of the deposits under consideration.
The Comptroller and Auditor General's report had intimated, said Mr Rabbitte, that "information that came into the public domain" through the national media had come from a memorandum he had written. "Did you leak it?"
Mr Spollen rejected this: "I phoned Tom Mulcahy [AIB's current chief executive] the next day and said that I'd had no discussion in any shape or form with anyone in relation to this affair - and that is the truth."
Pressed by Mr Rabbitte about the extent of his concern over the bank's potential exposure on the revenue front, Mr Spollen said that from February 6th onwards - after it was confirmed by Mr Gerry Scanlan, chief executive at the time, that the bank was not seeking to transfer him - he had felt the pressure was on in the light of the apparent deadlines.
In any large organisation such as AIB, he said, administration took time, and "it was clear that the required documentation could not take place in that period - and it did not". Mr Rabbitte sought to clarify Mr Spollen's earlier assertion that his proposed transfer to another AIB department had nothing to do with the views he had communicated to senior management on the DIRT issue.
He told the inquiry that he and his group internal audit department had been praised at board level by the chairman of the bank's audit committee, Mr Jim Culleton. This had been communicated to him by Mr John Keogh, then AIB's group finance director.
He had also received a telephone call at his home from the bank's chairman, Mr Peter Sutherland, who was a former school friend, intimating that it was to be recommended to the board that the status of the internal department should be upgraded within the organisation.
Less than a week later, to his "amazement", he was put on notice that he would be made head of corporate lending, an offer he declined. He accepted that the chief executive had the "right" to move people around, adding: "The group chief executive was not accustomed to being told `I won't go along with you'."
Mr Spollen admitted that he did not have first-hand information in respect of the bank's potential liability in respect of DIRT. He was less concerned with it as a quantitative issue than in a regulatory sense.
As head of the bank's audit department, he had excellent relations both with the Central Bank and the Bank of England, as regulators. He saw it as a matter of trust that the two central banks, as regulators, should be aware of the true position in relation to potential exposure in respect of non-resident bogus accounts.