Pat Rabbitte: Interest on loans Taoiseach Bertie Ahern received from friends in the early 1990s would now total about €20,000 he told the Dáil.
Mr Ahern said that based on 3 per cent interest a year on deposits, "the total interest would be over €20,000. I receive an annual figure from my tax adviser. It was calculated over the entire period on that basis. I paid capital gains and also gift tax."
The Taoiseach also insisted that even by today's stricter standards what he had done was "not in breach of either the ethics code, the tax code or a legislative base. At no time do I believe I had done any favours, or was beholden in any way."
He was responding to Labour leader Pat Rabbitte who asked had he established how much interest would have accrued on the loans totalling €50,000 he received. In a sharply worded contribution Mr Rabbitte also called on the Taoiseach to show a "little bit less of the common man routine. It is a long time Taoiseach since you were a common man. You've been driven around this country since 1987. You never put your hand in your pocket at a forecourt to fill the car with petrol. You're earning more than €250,000 per annum, so there is no point in comparing yourself to the man on Hill 16 who got into a bit of trouble and had a whip-round. Mr Haughey's collection started with a whip-round as well and it was purely an accident that it came out."
But Mr Ahern stressed that what he had put into the public domain was not in breach of any guidelines, including the current ones. The Labour leader had accused him of setting standards for others but failing to comply with them himself.
"You said that €50,000 you accepted in 1993, that remain unpaid 13 years later and on which no interest was charged, you say now that's a loan, but when it was suggested in the Michael Lowry affair that it was a loan, you said you would require incontrovertible written evidence of that arrangement and the amounts of the repayments at the time."
But Mr Ahern said "I'm not asking anyone to be purer than legislative guidelines in this House". He had no business connections whatsoever with any of the people who gave the loans.
Mr Rabbitte also pressed the Taoiseach about his interview comments about not having a bank account.
"Are you telling the House that during the period you were minister for finance, responsible for running the country's exchequer, that you had no bank account in the jurisdiction. Did you have a bank account outside the jurisdiction?"
The Taoiseach said: "I separated at the beginning of 1987 and it didn't conclude until the end of 1993 in the High Court. Over that period, my accounts were in the joint names of my wife and myself. For obvious reasons I did not use our joint account. I used cheques separately to deal with my issues and I did not open an account in my own name until afterwards."
When Mr Rabbitte said The Irish Times's estimate of €50,000 to €100,000 was not "off the wall" as the Taoiseach claimed, Mr Ahern said he did not want to take issue with The Irish Times, but it "very precisely stated" that four people had given him that amount. "Yesterday I proved that the sum was £22,500."
