Bankers blinked first as CJ drew the line

After years of growing tension between Charles Haughey and the AIB, the gloves finally came off at a meeting in October 1976.

Not literally, perhaps - the bank's memorandum of the event doesn't mention gloves. But it does describe Mr Haughey as "quite vicious" during the meeting at AIB's Oldbrook House headquarters; and recalling the confrontation himself yesterday, the one-time Taoiseach conceded it may have been "heated".

The bunfight at the Oldbrook corral also featured a warning by Mr Haughey that he could be a "very troublesome adversary," according to the memo. Parsing the sentence like a lawyer yesterday, its subject noted that only the words "very troublesome" were in quotes, and suggested "adversary" was the memo writer's term.

The bankers had begun the meeting with a "very hard line" and demands for the return of his chequebook. In the high-noon atmosphere, however, they blinked first. The troublesome customer kept his chequebook, telling the bank "he had to live". History records Mr Haughey lived on chicken dinners for much of the 1970s, as he toured the country, cultivating party grassroots on his climb back to power. His "wilderness years" he called them yesterday; but by the time of the meeting in Oldbrook House, a brighter future was dawning. At an earlier meeting the same autumn Mr Haughey had taken a more diplomatic tack with the bank, suggesting it did not make sufficient use of his "influential position", according to yet another internal memo.

He was more modest yesterday, insisting that although by then restored to the Fianna Fail front bench and "rehabilitated to some degree", his influence was confined to his friends. There was certainly no denying that his political fortunes were again on the rise; but as his public face grew more handsome, his finances, like the Portrait of Dorian Gray, were getting uglier. Visual art metaphors loom large in this inquiry. Tribunal counsel John Coughlan periodically assures Mr Haughey his questions are aimed at producing a "more complete picture," and the witness thanked the tribunal yesterday for providing so detailed a portrait of the bank's dealings with him.

Showing a talent for detail that was missing on Friday, Mr Haughey was on top form, from berating the AIB for improper language to contradicting its intelligence about his wife's finances. At another point, he suggested counsel was overstating the extent of drawings from his account, and forgetting the "crucifying" interest rates of the time. The debts were mounting up, he agreed, "but they weren't all drawings".

Attendance at the tribunal was well down, as proceedings continue to be slow. But counsel's methodical approach is yielding results in its attempt to portray the witness as a man more involved in his finances than hitherto suggested. With Mr Coughlan putting light and shade on Mr Haughey's drawings, a big picture could yet emerge.