The tribunal yesterday heard evidence concerning the third TD (sitting or former) now known to have had funds lodged in the Ansbacher deposits.
Mr Hugh Coveney closed his account in 1979, two years before he was elected to the Dail and the same year Mr Denis Foley opened his. When the former Taoiseach, Mr Charles Haughey, opened his account is unknown.
Mr Coveney was a candidate in the local elections in June 1979; was first elected as a Fine Gael deputy for Cork South Central in June 1981; was lord mayor of Cork in 1982; and was appointed minister for defence in 1994.
He died on March 14th, 1998, when he fell from a cliff-top walk near his home and was drowned.
It is understood that on the day before he died, a letter was sent from the tribunal containing evidence it had discovered showing Mr Coveney had an account in the Ansbacher deposits. The letter arrived at his home on the Monday after his death.
Mr Coveney had, two months earlier, given a lengthy memorandum of intended evidence concerning a US business project he was involved in the 1980s which led to him losing over $500,000 and which involved legitimate dealings with Guinness Mahon Cayman Trust.
There was no indication yesterday that he had had any dealings with the tribunal concerning the account he had in the Ansbacher deposits during the 1970s.
A US dollar account was opened in the Ansbacher deposits for Mr Coveney in April 1978, and a lodgment of $193,508 made. Dollars from the earlier sale of a yacht, Silver Apple, in the US were used to trade in Irish government gilts before being lodged in the account.
In December 1979, when the balance in the account was $176,199, it was cleared in two withdrawals. The money was used to pay for a yacht.
Mr Coveney's account did not have a sophisticated code. It was called Guinness Mahon Cayman Trust H.C., and files of the bank letters were discovered which mentioned "H. Coveney".
Mr John Coughlan SC, for the tribunal, said a more secretive coding system was introduced later. Mr Foley's account, opened in 1979, had the code A/A40.
Mr Simon Coveney, speaking to The Irish Times yesterday evening, said he believed the profits from trading in government gilts and the sale of the yacht by his father were free of any tax liability at the time. "I still don't feel that any of the evidence to date shows Dad was guilty of any wrongdoing, but obviously we have to wait for the decision of the tribunal on that."
Mr Simon Coveney won his father's seat in the by-election which followed his father's death. In September of last year, following a report in The Irish Times, Mr Coveney said it was not the case that his father had an account in the Ansbacher deposits, though he did have legitimate dealings with the Cayman bank in the 1980s in relation to the US business project.
"That was a factual and truthful statement of the situation as I knew it at the time. I didn't have then the information I have had for the past number of months," he said.
Some time after making the statement, his family's solicitor, who had been on holiday, had contacted Mr Coveney and informed him as to what the tribunal had discovered. This was the first he had heard of his father having had a deposit account with the Cayman bank, as against a business transaction.
Evidence is expected today from the former EU commissioner, Mr Peter Sutherland.