Bertie protests too much

Bertie Ahern said at the weekend in relation to the inquiries of the planning tribunal into his financial affairs: "Questioning about who is or is not entitled into my bedroom is not appropriate. Questions about what friends stayed loyal to me and which ones to Miriam [ his wife] at the time of our separation has nothing to do with planning in Dublin . . ., writes Vincent Browne.

...Questions about when I formed a second personal relationship following my separation also have nothing to do with Mr Gilmartin's charges . . . This questioning is prying. It is prurient and it is nothing to do with what a planning tribunal should be dealing with."

The comments represent a gross misrepresentation of what has been happening at the tribunal and suggest a deliberate attempt to mislead the public about what has gone on.

First the reference to the bedroom. It arose in the context of an entirely proper inquiry into his (Bertie's) use of the facilities at St Luke's, Drumcondra, where he has an office and where there was an apartment, which he used to live in off and on over several years. He was asked to describe the apartment and in doing so he mentioned a bedroom.

His evidence was directed at claiming (implausibly) that he did not have exclusive use of the apartment while he was living there, that meetings were held in the sitting room and that people used the kitchen. He himself volunteered: "When I had the apartment there the only thing I could control was the bedroom." (Day 804, question 111).

He was asked: "Are you saying, Mr Ahern, that your use of this apartment was limited to the extent that you had the use of the bedroom only and that other people could be wandering in and out, up and down, carrying on their business?", to which he replied: "Yes." Later on in his evidence, he said: "There were several councillors and several senators and others [ who would] use St Luke's."

Arising from that comment, he was asked: "I mean, in theory, on that basis, Mr Ahern, somebody could be sleeping in your bedroom one night and someone else sleeping there the next night", to which he answered "no . . . they didn't turn up in the middle of the night".

There was no prurient inquiry or prying at all into his bedroom arrangements. However, in the course of his evidence, he said he paid "nominal rent" for the apartment and it now seems he failed to acknowledge this in his tax returns. For most of us it might not be surprising that we would overlook fringe benefits. But for him it certainly was.

As minister for finance he introduced his first budget on January 29th, 1992. In that budget speech, he said: "In recent years, there has been a significant increase in use of fringe benefits in the payment of staff . . . An employee is liable to pay tax on these benefits unless they are specifically excluded from taxation. However, some benefits are difficult to tax accurately or adequately under present arrangements and this is obviously one of the reasons for their popularity. To the extent that they are undertaxed, the burden of taxation is increased for those taxpayers who do not receive them. I am, therefore, proposing a radical reform of the tax treatment of fringe benefits. There will be a new tax on fringe benefits, which will be payable by all employers, including those in the public sector, who make use of these benefits in paying their employees."

On the issue of friends being divided in their loyalties on the marriage separation, there was no inquiry into this at all, merely an acknowledgment of this being one of the difficulties that arise from a marriage break-up.

There was a reference to a second relationship (Day 804, question 87) but there was no prying into that, and indeed it was he who had described Celia Larkin as his "life partner" at the time - she had already done so in the course of her own evidence. But no prying, no prurience and that relationship was and is relevant to the tribunal inquiries because of the use of her bank accounts for funds belonging to and associated with him.

In the statement he issued on Sunday last concerning his tax affairs he claimed: "It is accepted practice since the foundation of the State that the tax affairs of any individual are confidential between that individual and the Revenue Commissioners. For every citizen, that is a basic expectation."

But, aside from the special requirements of TDs to be frank about their tax affairs, why should there be such confidentiality in relation to a person's tax affairs? It is quintessentially a public matter. We pay taxes on the basis of an assumed contract between citizens to fund the operations of the State that protects us and provides us all with basic services, and to undo the unfairness that arises from the unregulated operation of market forces.

Michael McDowell proposed several years ago that every year the taxes paid by every person in the State and every corporation should be published, so we would all know who was paying their fair share and who was not. This seems to me to be entirely reasonable and an obvious corollary of citizenship, a notion for which Bertie professes attraction.