Bertie Ahern gave his former partner Celia Larkin €45,510 earlier this year so she could repay money she was given fourteen years ago from Fianna Fáil funds in Dublin Central, the Mahon tribunal has heard.
Ms Larkin told the tribunal she got a short-term loan from Mr Ahern and later repaid him when she took out a second mortgage on her new home.
Ms Larkin said she decided to repay the £30,000, plus interest, she was given from the so-called B/T Account in March 1993, after a reporter called to the home of an elderly aunt last year, asking questions.
Ms Larkin said she was given a loan by the trustees of St Luke’s in 1993, when they learned that the house in which a number of her elderly relatives lived as tenants, was being put up for sale.
She said she left a blank cheque in St Luke’s in February and it was subsequently filled in and lodged to the constituency account.
Ms Larkin said her decision to repay the loan was prompted by her concern for her elderly aunt, and was not prompted by the tribunal’s discovery of the B/T account.
She said she wasn’t aware “if the tribunal had or hadn’t” discovered the account. Ms Larkin said she told Mr Ahern about the 1993 loan after it had been given to her. She said she did not ask Mr Ahern for a loan at the time, and did not know he had £50,000 in cash savings at the time.
Ms Larkin told the Mahon tribunal this morning that it never occurred to her in 1994 that a house being bought in Drumcondra for £138,000 by Manchester-based businessman Micheál Wall was being bought on behalf of Bertie Ahern or with his money.
Ms Larkin has returned to the tribunal to give evidence about a house Mr Wall has said he put a deposit on in November 1994 after it had been located by Ms Larkin, who at the time was Mr Ahern’s partner.
Mr Ahern, who had just become leader of Fianna Fáil, had an agreement with Mr Wall that he would rent the house and have an option to purchase it at a later date, the tribunal has been told. The tribunal is inquiring into whether Mr Wall bought the house as a nominee for Mr Ahern. Mr Ahern bought the house from Mr Wall in 1997, and still lives there.
Ms Larkin told Henry Murphy SC that she did not count cash in a briefcase the tribunal has been told was given to Mr Ahern by Mr Wall during a meeting in St Luke’s, Drumoncdra, in December 1994.
She said she brought the money to AIB O’Connell Street and lodged it to an account in her name, and believed it was “around £30,000 sterling”.
On the same date she transferred £50,000 belonging to Mr Ahern to a second account in her name. She said this money was to be used for furnishing the house while the money that came from Mr Wall was to be used for renovations. But, in the event, some of the Wall money was used for furnishing.
Ms Larkin said she was not aware at the time that Mr Wall made a will in which he left the house to Mr Ahern and, in the event of Mr Ahern pre-deceasing Mr Wall, to Mr Ahern’s two daughters. Asked was she surprised when she learned more recently about the will, Ms Larkin said: “I didn’t think about it.”
Mr Murphy pointed out that during a private interview with the tribunal Ms Larkin had said that Mr Wall “bought the house in his own name, ok”.
Ms Larkin said Mr Wall had bought the house alone, not with his wife or in the name of his company.
