Chequebook Charlie's long decade's journey into debt

They described him as a "gentleman farmer" in an internal memo, but Charles Haughey's bankers were not normally so polite. The AIB's collected correspondence on the former Taoiseach is a steamy volume and, as lawyers for the Moriarty tribunal treated him to an extended excerpt from it yesterday, Mr Haughey could have been forgiven for blushing at the details.

He didn't, but it must have been a close-run thing.

The same 1975 memo also accused him of being "quite irresponsible in money matters" and bemoaned his "empty promises" to contain the overdraft. Another said his finances were "deteriorating daily". A third complained that Mr Haughey had "abused our confidence and trust".

The picture painted was one of bankers pulling their hair out in exasperation at the client's relentless spending and, whatever about the bankers, the language of the memos was certainly getting balder. Resorting to all-capital letters at one point, the bank noted with apparent horror Mr Haughey's "audacious application" for a further loan to build a house on Inishvickillane, a proposal which had the regional manager threatening to seize his cheque book.

Mr Haughey sat through that and much more like it yesterday, inscrutable. "I'm having trouble with this book," he said of the collection of documents early on; a masterpiece of understatement, we thought, until we realised his lever-arch file had just jammed.

Twice he pronounced himself "overwhelmed" and once declared "quite frankly, I'm lost," but he appeared otherwise unmoved by memories of his long decade's journey into debt. He suggested the threat to his cheque book "wouldn't have been taken seriously" at the time, but he could remember few details of the many crisis meetings with the bank. "It was a long time ago," he protested, correctly enough, but he could not disagree that by 1975, his accounts were redder than Vietnam.

There was evidence yesterday that Mr Haughey's pulling power is on the wane. The tribunal gallery was full, but there were seats available in the ancillary rooms where proceedings were broadcast on screens. Worse still, socialist protesters who heckled the former Taoiseach on his way into Dublin Castle didn't wait around to jeer his exit.

But Mr Haughey is nothing if not a trouper. On his way out, a member of the public gallery proffered a copy of the McCracken tribunal report, including as it does some damning criticisms of its main subject, for his autograph. Undaunted, Mr Haughey opened the report and signed the title page with a flourish.

Mr Justice Moriarty had earlier explained that because of the witness's medical condition, evidence would be taken in two-hour daily "tranches", continuing next week. There was not much new in yesterday's tranche. The details of his bank records had been heard already by the tribunal, and only Mr Haughey's elucidations could add to them.

The former Taoiseach had little to add, although he did elaborate on an episode from 1974 which offered his bankers temporary respite. It concerned the sale by his wife of an "international-class" show-jumper, proceeds from which reduced his debt.

This was only a blip in Mr Haughey's burgeoning overdraft, however, and in terms of increasing the tribunal's understanding, it was a case of flogging a dead horse.