Dunne forgot £282,500 cheque

Mr Ben Dunne told the tribunal that he now accepted he must have authorised the payment of a £282,500 sterling cheque for the benefit of Mr Charles J. Haughey in May 1987, even though he had no recollection of it.

Mr Dunne said he was "astonished" he could not remember giving instructions to Mr Matt Price, a Dunnes Stores executive in Bangor, Co Down, to make out the cheque to Tripleplan Ltd and send it to the company accountant, Mr Noel Fox.

However, he said that from the information made public by the tribunal, he had to conclude that he had authorised a monetary payment to Mr Haughey seven months earlier than he had previously believed.

In his statement to the 1997 McCracken tribunal, Mr Dunne had said the first payment he had made to Mr Haughey was in late 1987.

"It is, I submit, logical that if an earlier payment had been made by me or if I had any recollection of such a payment I would, of course, have included that payment in the submission that was made to the McCracken tribunal," Mr Dunne said in a statement read to the tribunal yesterday.

"I reiterate and believe that, having authorised such a payment of this size for the benefit of Mr Haughey, I would have expected to remember giving such instructions to Mr Price or, in the alternative, to Mr Fox. I am astonished that I have no such recollection.

"I summarise my position, therefore, as follows: I cannot remember giving any instruction to Mr Noel Fox, to Oliver Freaney and Co, or to any person to transmit the cheque in question to Mr Desmond Traynor or otherwise. I did not give the cheque to Mr Traynor or to Mr Charles Haughey, but it is now apparent that I authorised this payment.

"I readily accept the veracity of Mr Price's statement to me that he had those instructions from me."

He said the Tripleplan cheque was dated May 20th, 1987, "which is seven months before I believed the first cheque was paid."

He added that he had remained unaware of the cheque until it was brought to his attention by the Moriarty tribunal on May 29th last. At that time, he believed it fell outside the sequence of events relating to payments to Mr Haughey.

He said he had spoken to Mr Price in March 1997, before making his statement to the McCracken tribunal to discuss a different payment to the Cayman banker, Mr John Furze.

In the course of their discussion, he said, Mr Price did not relay to him a list of "not normal payments", which had been given to him the previous December and included mention of the Tripleplan cheque.

Mr John Coughlan SC, counsel for the tribunal, said that from this information it would seem Mr Dunne authorised the payment in question. He said the tribunal would now pursue an additional line of inquiry, seeking to find out when the persons involved with the cheque had knowledge of it and how they dealt with that knowledge.

Mr Dunne recalled yesterday the sequence of events which led to him arranging funds for Mr Haughey. He accepted that it had been "a major decision" which would undoubtedly stick in his mind.

After Mr Traynor had approached Mr Fox about raising the money, Mr Fox had discussed the matter with him. Within two or three weeks Mr Dunne had made a decision and had offered to provide all the money.

It would take between six and seven months and would have to be handled "delicately" and "privately" because of Mr Haughey's political status, according to Mr Dunne.

Asked by Mr Coughlan where the money would come from, Mr Dunne said it was to be provided by a trading company in the Far East.

Some time later, however, Mr Noel Fox approached him with the news that Mr Haughey "needed the funds quicker than I said I would have them available," said Mr Dunne.

Questioned about the precise timing of Mr Traynor's approach to Mr Fox, Mr Dunne said he remembered being asked to "get a cheque quick". He accepted that from the facts now uncovered it had to have been the cheque to Tripleplan.

To the best of his knowledge, there were no other payments made to Mr Haughey, he said.