Amounts totalled some stg£68,000

Five memorable cash transactions:Bertie Ahern has agreed there were five memorable cash transactions involving his accounts in 1994 and 1995, worth a total of some stg£68,000.

Des O'Neill SC, for the tribunal, said the five transactions took place over a 13½-month period and each had memorable features by reason of the amount involved or the purpose for which it was used.

However, only two of the transactions were disclosed to the tribunal when it first sought information, he said, while the other three emerged as the tribunal inquired further into the two payments.

The first lodgement, for £24,838.49 in October 1994, included stg£8,000 which had been given to Mr Ahern by a group of Manchester businessmen.

This was a memorable event because it was the first occasion on which anyone in Manchester had given Mr Ahern a large sum, Mr O'Neill suggested.

The second lodgement, for £28,772.90 in December 1994, came from a stg£30,000 payment by businessman Michael Wall, which was to be used on refurbishment work on Mr Wall's proposed house-purchase in Drumcondra, which Mr Ahern was to rent.

Mr Ahern agreed with counsel that this was the only time someone had come to his constituency office and produced £30,000. Although this was a memorable, unique event, it wasn't money for himself; Mr Wall was giving him money for an account for his (Mr Wall's) use.

A third transaction was the purchase by Mr Ahern of stg£30,000 but the fourth, a lodgement of £11,743.74 in June 1995, was the first occasion he give money to his then partner, Celia Larkin, to pay for expenses on the house, Mr O'Neill continued.

He said the fifth transaction, for £19,142.92 in December 1995 which was left over from renovating the house, was memorable because of the size of the amount and the fact that it represented the end of expenditure on the house, according to counsel.

Mr Ahern stressed that he had provided the tribunal with financial documentation covering a seven-year period and had provided everything he could possibly find. Mr O'Neill said that as a result of the information provided by Mr Ahern during the discovery process, the tribunal initially followed up only two of the five transactions it was now investigating.