Taoiseach Bertie Ahern told the Mahon tribunal today he had attempted without success to trace the source of two amounts of £5,000 lodged to an account at the Irish Permanent building society in Drumcondra in 1994 and 1995.
Mr Ahern returned to the tribunal in Dublin Castle this morning to begin two days of giving evidence about his finances.
The tribunal heard the account was opened with a cheque for £5,000 in January 1994. A total of £2,500 was lodged and the other £2,500 was withdrawn in cash. A second cheque for £5,000 was lodged in December 21st, 1995.
Neither the tribunal nor Mr Ahern have been able to trace the source of the amounts, tribunal counsel Des O'Neill said.
Mr Ahern said he believed the second of the two amounts was given to him by his brother. He said he had been given £5,000 by his brother at around that time but could not be sure it was that particular amount lodged to the building society because no record of the cheque could be found.
"I can positively tell you I got £5,000 from my family," he said. It was one of the amounts, but he could not say which one. This was money from his father's inheritance, he said.
On the first lodgement in January 1994, Mr Ahern said he and his legal team had "trawled" for the records of the amounts but had not been able to match the £5,000 cheque up with a donor.
He said he was sure he knew the name of the individual and the company from which that had come. However, although he went back to the company "three or four times," and it was "very helpful", it was not in a position to confirm it was the source of the £5,000.
The head of the company, from whom Mr Ahern believed the money had come, was dead, he told the tribunal.
Asked by Mr O'Neill if the £5,000 was a "political donation", Mr Ahern said: "It was a political donation for my personal use."
Mr O'Neill asked if there was any reason he would lodge such money to an account for his personal use. The Taoiseach said: "I would only do that if they said 'that money is for you, it's for Bertie Ahern'. That's the only way I would use it. If they said 'it's for the constituency', that's different."
The Taoiseach said that any money given to a politician would tend to be used in the constituency.
"When I'm asked to participate in draws, raffles, humanitarian issues, I will give it out of my own money," he said.
Mr Ahern told the tribunal a lodgment of £7,000 to the account in March 1994 had been given to him by his mother. "My mother gave me £7,000 out of her account," he said. He did not know where it came from.
"I was given it by my mother. I did not ask my mother how she got it, and I can't ask her now," he said.
He told counsel he had gone back through all his records for 20 years to satisfy himself and Revenue about all his lodgements. There were "not that many" he had not been able to check off, he said.
Lawyers for Mr Ahern, who is currently taking a legal challenge against aspects of the tribunal's work, today strongly criticised the "intrusive" inquiry. Counsel for Mr Ahern, Conor Maguire said: "Every day seems to yield the same intrusive inquiries, again and again, going further into details in relation to this man's bank accounts and further and further away from the central allegations." Referring to the witnesses linked to the allegations against the Taoiseach, Mr Maguire added: "I don't think the words (Tom) Gilmartin or (Owen) O'Callaghan have been mentioned once today."