Chairman criticises Ahern team

Murtagh evidence: The chairman of the tribunal said that Taoiseach Bertie Ahern's legal team should have produced documents …

Murtagh evidence:The chairman of the tribunal said that Taoiseach Bertie Ahern's legal team should have produced documents which the tribunal had sought from them in early August.

Judge Alan Mahon said that during the hearings in July counsel for Mr Ahern, Colm Ó hOisín SC, had raised with a witness, Rosemary Murtagh, of AIB, certain mathematical propositions to do with currency exchange.

Judge Mahon said that Mr Ahern's legal team had "declined" to furnish its calculations to the tribunal even though they had been raised with the witness.

He said it was "ridiculous" that Mr Ahern's representatives were raising the calculations with a witness but refusing to furnish them to the tribunal.

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Mr Ó hOisín said he was entitled not to furnish the calculations to the tribunal until the bank's witnesses had finished giving evidence, because the evidence was affecting the "ground rules" under which the calculations were being carried out.

Ms Murtagh, who manages the currency services division at AIB, returned to the witness box yesterday.

In July she was questioned at length as to whether foreign currency remittances from AIB O'Connell St to bank headquarters could show whether money lodged in O'Connell St on December 5th, 1994, was dollars or sterling. Mr Ahern has said that it had been sterling.

In July, Ms Murtagh appeared to agree with the proposition from Mr Ó hOisín that a mathematical exercise could be carried out that showed the money was likely to have been sterling.

However, yesterday she told Des O'Neill SC, for the tribunal, that she had not meant to say in July that she agreed with Mr Ó hOisín.

"I don't understand [Mr Ó hOisín's] hypothesis.

"I was just listening to Mr Ó hOisín. He obviously had done something that I hadn't seen."

She said she had understood what Mr Ó hOisín "was saying" but had not understood "what he meant".