Bertie Ahern had savings of over £70,000 when he accepted a cash "dig-out" from some friends in the early 1990s, writes Colm Keena
The second dig-out arranged for Bertie Ahern in the early 1990s arose entirely independently of the first, according to the evidence given to the tribunal yesterday.
The contributors to the second collection did not know of the first one, and were prompted to collect the money for a different reason, the tribunal was told.
The second collection resembles the first in that the contributors say they decided the collection would have to be in cash, as Bertie Ahern might not accept, or cash, a cheque.
Des Richardson, who was involved in organising the first collection along with the late Gerry Brennan, has said he and Mr Brennan came to this same conclusion when organising their December 1993 collection.
In relation to their contributions to the second, September 1994 collection, Dermot Carew, Barry English and Paddy Reilly all said they sourced the money from cash they had at the time.
They have no paper records of their contributions. None made bank withdrawals to fund the contribution. The amounts they contributed were, respectively: £4,5000; £5,000 and £3,500.
Joe Burke, who is to give evidence today, is expected to say he too gave £3,500 in cash and has no paper record.
The tribunal has been told the £16,500 was lodged along with money Mr Ahern has said he received in Manchester. The lodgement totalled £24,838.49, and was the opening deposit to a new account.
The amount lodged equates exactly to £25,000 sterling when one of the sterling exchange rates in use by the bank concerned on the day in question is applied, and a discretionary £5 commission is deducted.
The money was lodged to AIB O'Connell Street, Dublin, which in the period received about £2,000 in sterling cash on an average day. On the day Mr Ahern opened his account, the branch received sterling cash to a value of Ir£27,491.95.
Mr Ahern has told the tribunal he did not lodge £25,000 sterling. The tribunal has pointed out that when the figure £16,500 is subtracted from the amount lodged, the remaining amount cannot translate into a round figure sterling amount. Mr Ahern has said the amount received from the four contributors may have been £100 more or less than the figure he originally mentioned, or he could have added money to the sterling or Irish pound amounts given to him, before making the lodgement.
Des O'Neill SC, for the tribunal, pointed out yesterday that at the time the witnesses said they collected £16,500 to assist Mr Ahern because of his difficult circumstances, the then minister for finance had been separated from his wife for seven years, was in a new relationship, had since 1992 the use of an apartment above the Fianna Fáil building, St Luke's, in Drumcondra, and had savings in AIB and the Irish Permanent Building society totalling more than £70,000.
Mr Carew, who said he gave the money to Mr Ahern, said he told him it was to help towards the purchase of a house. He said Mr Ahern accepted the money on the basis it was a loan, and did not mention the fact to him that he, Mr Ahern, had more than enough to pay for a deposit on a house.
The money was not repaid until after the making of the payment became the source of public controversy last year.
In his interview with Brian Dobson on RTÉ during that controversy, Mr Ahern indicated that the contributors to the second collection would have wanted to contribute to the first collection. "There were others that wanted to assist at the time and later on in 1994, four of them gave me £16,500," he said. Yesterday's evidence, however, is to the effect that the second collection was entirely unrelated to and independent of the first.
In the Dáil in October last year, in response to a question from Enda Kenny, Mr Ahern indicated the second collection was not for the purposes of buying a house.
Yet yesterday Mr Ahern's friend, Dermot Carew, said he handed the money to Mr Ahern and told him it was to help him purchase a house. In the RTÉ interview, Mr Ahern described the contributors to the second collection as "good friends of mine".
Yesterday Mr English, who said he contributed £5,000, said he'd met Mr Ahern three or four times prior to making the payment. At the time Mr English was 28 years old.