Prospect of answers fades into black

In the same week we learned that information can be recovered from black holes in space, the prospect of recovering it from members of the 1989 Cabinet remains frustratingly beyond our grasp.

There were times during the cross-examination of Pee Flynn yesterday when we hoped for a dramatic intervention from Prof Stephen Hawking, with a new theory about what happened to Tom Gilmartin's £50,000. In the absence of such a development, the donation's exact fate is still a mystery.

According to Prof Flynn's theory, the money most likely disappeared into the bottomless vortex of the 1989 general election campaign. As Pee describes it, Mayo is a constituency of impenetrable vastness: "from the bridge of Shrule as far as Blacksod Bay, 135 miles - the same distance as from Dublin to Galway". Elections there are very costly, and "entertainment" is the biggest expense of all.

Not just during the campaign, either. "The celebrations usually went on for a month or two afterwards," he said.

But whereas even black holes are not now believed to be completely "black", Mayo in 1989 was composed entirely of dark matter, the witness suggested. No radio waves escaped from it, and certainly no receipts. "I sought records from suppliers," Mr Flynn told the tribunal, as if reporting the results of a great experiment. "But I'm afraid I wasn't so successful." With the possible exception of forensic science, Pee is a man of many talents. Reflecting on the complexity of his personal finances, he recalled a former career as publican and quipped: "I often thought I was the local bank myself, from the number of cheques I cashed on Friday evenings." If Pee really were a bank, however, he'd be the bank that doesn't like to say yes. Time and again, asked by tribunal lawyers for a yes or no answer, he opted for something in between. "I hear what you're saying," he replied to one such demand.

His answers that weren't non-committal were merely vague. If he were a famous physicist, Pee would have devised the general theory of relativity, but not the special one. Describing Tom Gilmartin's impatience with the planning process, he recalled once trying to persuade him of the "inevitability of gradualness" in local authority affairs. By the end of the evidence yesterday, we were resigned to the inevitability of generalness in his answers. This took its toll on the public gallery, which emptied during the afternoon as the PFB (Pee Flynn Bank) drastically cut interest rates.

The one point on which he was adamant was that Mr Gilmartin's money did not go to buying property such as Mrs Flynn's 1997 purchase of a forestry plantation in north Mayo. This detail carried tantalising echoes of Ray Burke - another politician who found the 1989 election ferociously expensive - and if Stephen Hawking is not available, perhaps another great investigator could shed light on this affair.

Bertie Ahern may have found nothing up the trees of North Dublin, but maybe the ones in North Mayo are worth a look.