Ahern evidence:Taoiseach Bertie Ahern told the Mahon tribunal yesterday that he "had enough to do" without keeping accounts of his earnings and expenditure.
Mr Ahern was giving evidence at the Quarryvale II module of the planning tribunal.
Counsel for the tribunal, Des O'Neill SC, had questioned the Taoiseach about the source of some of the lodgements to his accounts in AIB between January 1988 and December 1992. He queried whether the Taoiseach had kept records of transactions apart from bank statements.
"You didn't, at the end of every year, work out what your income was and what your expenditure was and detail how you had spent?" Mr O'Neill asked.
"I had enough to do," Mr Ahern replied.
"I am not a plc, I am not a sole trader, I am not scheduled D taxpayer, just pay as you earn."
He had also explained that he had spent many Saturday evenings trying to find the documentation required by the tribunal when they first contacted him in relation to their queries in October 2004.
"It wasn't done for me. I spent 10 Saturday nights trying to gather it together," he said.
He said that he genuinely tried to resolve all the issues raised by the tribunal quickly and efficiently.
"I accept that sometimes that took a period to do it, but I and who assisted me, never intentionally delayed the tribunal," he said.
Mr Ahern explained that he had not lost sleep about the allegations that he had received payments of IR£50,000 and IR£30,000 from property developer Owen O'Callaghan; he was more concerned about other allegations.
"I get allegations ten a penny; as you know yourself, it goes with the turf," he said.
"If I was losing sleep it wasn't about those issues, it was about the fact that this man was saying all kinds of mad things, including that I set up two colleagues to go and blackmail another colleague, and if that had been true I would have been finished. It was far worse than money."
Mr O'Neill asked if he would agree that any of the allegations would have exactly the same consequence. Mr Ahern said he would not.
"The difference of having got money or trying to blackmail somebody, blackmail a colleague, that's a very different reason," he said.
"I see, well I think we can move on," Mr O'Neill replied.
