Former taoiseach Bertie Ahern has told the Mahon tribunal he has never had a bank account or a building society account outside the Republic of Ireland.
Mr Ahern was being questioned by tribunal counsel Des O’Neill SC 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.
He said that in the event, after he had concluded his separation agreement with his wife in late 1993, he decided not to invest in a property in Manchester because it would be “far better to sort myself out at home.”
Mr Ahern was asked about evidence he gave the tribunal some months ago where he was questioned about £8,000 sterling he said he was given as a gift by Mr Kilroe and others after a dinner in his Manchester hotel.
During that evidence Mr Ahern said he kept small amounts of sterling in his safe which he could have mixed with this gift.
"I keep not big amounts, but small amounts of sterling all the time," he said then. Yesterday Mr Ahern said he would consider thousands of sterling to be small.
