The Flood tribunal has traced the retired bank manager of the AIB branch in London through which payments to Mr Ray Burke's offshore accounts were routed.
Mr Timothy McHale is being called out of sequence to give evidence next week about his dealings with the former minister for communications in the 1980s. His evidence is expected to prove highly controversial.
Mr Burke has told the tribunal that many of the payments between his accounts in Jersey and the Isle of Man were routed through the Bruton Street branch of AIB in London. However, the branch has told the tribunal it has no record of an account in Mr Burke's name. Mr Burke himself says he has no records of the account.
Up to last week the tribunal and the bank had not succeeded in tracing Mr McHale.
Mr Burke has retracted evidence he gave in relation to a sum of £15,000 he originally said was transferred from the AIB in Jersey to the Bruton Street account in 1985. In a letter delivered to Mr Justice Flood on Monday, Mr Burke said he now believed this money was lodged not from one of his accounts, but from a third party.
Mr Burke consented yesterday to three new witnesses being interviewed, including the Jersey solicitors Bedell and Cristin and an AIB official, probably Mr McHale. All three are due to appear next week.
In his evidence yesterday the former minister acknowledged he had ignored the advice of the most senior official in his own government department in issuing a Section 16 directive fixing the amount RTE was entitled to charge Century Radio for the use of transmission services.
Mr Bernard McDonagh, the then secretary of the Department of Communications, had advised Mr Burke to write back to the Independent Radio and Television Commission (IRTC) to indicate Century had "seriously underestimated" the costs involved.
Mr Burke did not subsequently enter into any correspondence with the IRTC on the fees and fixed the fees at a figure RTE had previously described as "uneconomical".
Mr Burke disputed the earlier evidence of Mr Sean Connolly, chief executive officer of the IRTC, that "Century's promoters felt they could enlist the help of ministers" to intervene on their behalf. He argued that he had taken RTE's side on many later issues.
Questioned about his awareness of the financial difficulties Century was facing in late 1989, Mr Burke said Mr Oliver Barry had informed him that the station was in financial difficulties because of the transmission coverage RTE was providing.
However, it "came like a bolt from the blue" in a meeting with Mr Barry on December 19th that the owners were closing the station. He conceded he had instructed Mr McDonagh to cap RTE's advertising during a second meeting with Mr Barry on December 19th, but he disputed that he had mentioned the figure of a 50 per cent cut in RTE's radio advertising revenue at that meeting.