Analysis:Celia Larkin never saw cash she lodged for Bertie Ahern in December 1994, writes Colm Keena
Yesterday's day-long questioning of Celia Larkin focused in on the fact that she had given different versions of key events in communications with the tribunal over the past year or so.
Ms Larkin's explanation was that it was a question of pulling pieces of memory together over a period of sustained effort at recollection.
Telephone contact with her former partner, Bertie Ahern last year, during which he told that certain transactions had coincided with a particularly traumatic period in his career, prompted her recall, she said.
The tribunal's interest in Mr Ahern's finances led to it contacting him some time in or around December 2004. He in turn contacted Ms Larkin, and asked her about transactions which involved accounts in her name. She contacted the bank both of them used, AIB O'Connell St, Dublin. At this time they were no longer in a relationship.
About a year later the tribunal contacted Ms Larkin and she made further inquiries about these same accounts. Yesterday she said her focus was on her administration of the funds that had been put under her care, and not on the circumstances surrounding a £28,772.90 lodgement she made on December 5th, 1994.
This lodgement involved, literally, bundles of cash being given to Mr Ahern by Manchester businessman Michael Wall, something Ms Larkin had witnessed and which suprised her at the time.
Ms Larkin, a political activist since the 1970s and a close political assistant of Mr Ahern's during the 1980s and 1990s, seems not to have focused back in 2005 and 2006 on how explosive bundles of cash being given to Mr Ahern, would look in the context of a tribunal's inquries.
In her initial communication to the tribunal, Ms Larkin said the odd figure nature of the £28,772.90 lodgement was the result of a sterling amount being brought to the bank, converted into Irish pounds, and lodged.
The bank's records do not support this. The tribunal has established that the records of the bank branch show that sterling to the value of less than £2,000 was brought into the branch on the day in question. On the same day an unusually large amount of non-sterling was brought into the branch.
Furthermore, the tribunal has applied the exchange rates for sterling used in the branch on the day, to the amount lodged, and found it did not result in a round figure sterling amount. It did find that when one of the rates used on the day for dollars was applied, the calculation resulted in a round figure amount, $45,000.
Ms Larkin's evidence yesterday was that on Saturday, December 3rd, 1994, she walked into Mr Ahern's office in St Luke's where Mr Ahern was talking with Mr Wall. There were a number of bundles of sterling cash on the table, and a few in Mr Ahern's hands. He was bringing the cash into an adjoining office, where he had a safe.
That day or that night in the pub, she, Mr Wall, Mr Ahern, and the late Gerard Brennan, all discussed the money, how it would be kept by Ms Larkin for use on a house Mr Wall was purchasing and which Mr Ahern was to rent with an option to buy. Mr Brennan, a solicitor who acted for Mr Ahern and Mr Wall, recommended to Ms Larkin that she put the money in its own account. No-one mentioned amounts.
Yesterday Ms Larkin said that at Mr Ahern's request she collected a suitcase from St Luke's on the Monday, and was driven by his driver to AIB O'Connell St, where bank official Philip Murphy, who had already been contacted by Mr Ahern, took it from her. A new account was opened and she was given a lodgement slip and other documentation She never saw the sterling she presumed was in the suitcase, and never asked how much foreign currency there was. She brought the documentation back to St Lukes.
Mr Wall told the tribunal earlier this week that the cash he gave Mr Ahern on December 3rd, 1994, was mostly sterling but also included some Irish pounds. As Ms Larkin never looked in the briefcase or asked what currencies were lodged by her on the following Monday, she cannot add to Mr Wall's evidence.
If Mr Wall's evidence is correct, then the amount lodged cannot have been the result of the exchange of $45,000. The fact that the amount lodged translates into $45,000 exactly, when one of the four decimal point dollar exchange rates used on the day is applied to it, is therefore simply a coincidence.
Ms Larkin opened an account in her own name to receive the £28,772.90, money which belonged to Mr Wall. Judge Mary Faherty queried her about this yesterday. Although the account had been opened on solicitor Mr Brennan's advice, nothing had been done to establish Mr Wall's legal title to the money. His name was not added to the account, and no memo or note was written to state that it was not Ms Larkin's money.
Judge Faherty asked what would have transpired if something had happened to Ms Larkin or Mr Wall. Ms Larkin said she hadn't been thinking about dying.
Ms Larkin was clear and unwavering in the evidence she gave yesterday. The difficulty is that it forms part of an overall narrative concerning Mr Ahern and his money that is so very strange, and which conflicts with the bank's records.