Former taoiseach Bertie Ahern has told the Mahon tribunal there is no documentary evidence to prove the source of the approximately €100,000 that was lodged to the B/T account in the period 1989 to 1995.
Responding to Des O’Neill SC, for the tribunal, he also agreed there was only one withdrawal from the account for which there was documentary evidence.
Bertie Ahern at the Mahon tribunal yesterday
A copy of a cheque exists showing £30,000 being paid to a solicitor who was involved in the sale of a house that was bought by Mr Ahern’s former partner, Celia Larkin, in 1993. Ms Larkin has said she was given this money as a loan.
Mr O’Neill said the tribunal has been told the B/T account was opened in 1989 to gather money that could be used for the upkeep and maintenance of St Luke’s, Drumcondra, but “not one penny” of the withdrawals made over the years, were spent on that purpose.
The account, which has been dormant since 1995, is still in existence. Mr Ahern said the first eight lodgements to the account were donations given in the course of the 1989 general election campaign.
He said another two lodgements, including one for £19,000 that was lodged after a cheque for exactly £20,000 was cashed, arose from golf classics. Mr Ahern could not say what account the cheque had been written on.
Yesterday, Mr Ahern told the tribunal he has never had a bank account or a building society account outside the Republic of Ireland.
Mr Ahern was being questioned on his latest evidence that in the 1990s he decided to build a sterling cash “stake” in his safe in Dublin, with a view to using it for a deposit on a two bedroom mews in a development at Salford Quay, Manchester.
Mr Ahern said that on five or six occasions he brought £2,000 to £3,000 in Irish cash to Manchester where he exchanged it for sterling cash with the Manchester based Irish businessman, the late Tim Kilroe.
He said he would change the money in a car or a bar or a restaurant or in Mr Kilroe’s hotel, the Four Seasons, but not in Mr Kilroe’s office. He would then bring the sterling cash back to Ireland after his weekend visit to Manchester. On one occasion they exchanged money in St Luke’s, Drumcondra.
Mr Ahern has said this sterling was the main source of the sterling cash totalling £15,500 that was lodged to the Irish Permanent Building Society, Drumcondra, on three dates in 1994.
Mr O’Neill asked Mr Ahern why he had not opened an account in Britain at the time he was thinking of buying a property in Manchester.
He said Irish banks would not give a mortgage for a property outside Ireland. Mr Ahern said that at the time he was “outside the banking system” and had no banking accounts.