A Dublin tax adviser has told the Mahon tribunal he was told by the former taoiseach Bertie Ahern in around 2000 that Mr Ahern had been given approximately £8,000 sterling at a function in Manchester.
Noel Corcoran, a former President of the Institute of Taxation, said he was told by Mr Ahern that he had been given the money "five or six years earlier".
Mr Corcoran said he did not take a note of a phone call he got from Mr Ahern, but could remember the conversation well because it was unusual to receive a call for tax advice from a sitting taoiseach.
He said Mr Ahern also told him he had received loans from a number of non-relatives at around the same time. He said that on the basis of what he was told by Mr Ahern, he advised him that he did not have any tax liability.
Mr Corcoran told Des O’Neill SC, for the tribunal, that he did not charge Mr Ahern for the advice and did not consider him a client. He said he knew Mr Ahern from when Mr Ahern was Minister for Finance and they “always got on well”.
Mr Corcoran was called to give evidence after a request from Mr Ahern to the tribunal that he be called. He said he was contacted about three months ago by Mr Ahern’s solicitor and asked if he would be willing to give evidence.
“I said I would prefer not to but if I had to I would,” he told the inquiry this morning. He had not spoken to Mr Ahern about the matter and no-one had refreshed his memory.
A second witness was also called today at Mr Ahern’s request. Solicitor Sheena Beale carried out an examination of the ownership of St Luke’s in 1999 when a mortgage was being taken out on the property.
She concluded that it was owned in trust “for Fianna Fáil Dublin Central”. Mr O’Neill said an assignment of trust dated May 1988, which set out that the legal owners of St Luke’s held the property in trust for Fianna Fáil, was not stamped until October 1992.
Mr Ahern was due to begin his evidence at midday.
The tribunal is continuing its inquiries into aspects of Mr Ahern’s finances in the 1990s, including the lodgement of sums of sterling to building society accounts on his behalf.
It is also examining the circumstances surrounding the purchase of Mr Ahern’s constituency office, St Luke’s, in Drumcondra in Dublin.
Mr Ahern’s former partner Celia Larkin told the tribunal yesterday that she was given €40,000 earlier this year by the former taoiseach so she could repay money to Fianna Fáil's Dublin Central organisation.
Mr Ahern gave her the money as a short-term loan, she said, and she later took out a second mortgage on her new home and repaid Mr Ahern.
Ms Larkin said she decided to repay the money she had received from Fianna Fáil Dublin Central in 1993 after a journalist called to the house where her elderly aunt lived in December last year and made queries about the house. "It was to protect her because she was agitated by people calling to the house," she said.
Ms Larkin said her decision to repay the money, which amounted to €45,510 when interest was added, was not motivated by the fact that the tribunal had discovered the building society account from which the £30,000 had been given to her.
Ms Larkin was also asked yesterday about her role in the purchase of Mr Ahern's current home in Beresford Avenue, Drumcondra. She told Henry Murphy SC, for the tribunal, that it never crossed her mind at the time that Micheál Wall bought the house on behalf of Mr Ahern or using Mr Ahern's money.
Mr Wall, who has already given evidence of handing over a briefcase of cash to Mr Ahern in 1994, is listed to give evidence to the tribunal tomorrow and Friday.
The tribunal is investigating whether Mr Wall purchased the house in Drumcondra as Mr Ahern's nominee in 1995. Mr Ahern has said this is not the case.
