FF to come under scrutiny for failing to provide documents

The Moriarty tribunal will have to inquire whether Fianna Fail's failure to provide all the documentation it needed for its inquiry was inadvertent, counsel for the tribunal, Mr John Coughlan SC, said yesterday.

Mr Coughlan was remarking on the fact that the tribunal only recently became aware of what it refers to as a "second list" of donors, but what Fianna Fail prefers to describe as "an extract" from the party's cash receipts book.

"The failure to get all the records, that is all records other than the cash receipts book, may have been through inadvertence, but that is a matter to be inquired into," Mr Coughlan said yesterday.

He said the tribunal had only found out that Mr Ahern and Mr Fleming had inquired into Mr Mark Kavanagh's 1989 donation to Fianna Fail when "the matter broke in the media on Thursday of last week" despite the fact that both men had made their inquiries in 1996".

"On the previous Monday [to when the story broke] the tribunal had made information available to Fianna Fail and to Mr Fleming that Mr Kavanagh had informed the tribunal that his company had made a contribution . . . directly to Mr Charles Haughey by way of a cheque made payable to £25,000 and three bank drafts £25,000 made payable to cash".

Earlier, Mr Coughlan said: "I am not concluding that there was any deliberate withholding of information from the tribunal, but the facts need to be established in the public domain and it would be for you, sir, as the tribunal at the end of the day, to make any findings of fact, or to arrive at any conclusions which you consider appropriate in accordance with the terms of reference which you have been given for the purpose of this inquiry."

During Mr Ahern's testimony, Mr Coughlan remarked:

"Mr [Sean] Fleming, in respect of the receipts he was asked to send to Mr Haughey and to his office, kept what we describe as a list; what Mr Fleming describes as an extract from the cash receipts book.

"There is no suggestion that there were two sets of books being kept by the Fianna Fail party. But without Mr Fleming's list or extract, the key to the cash receipts book could not be unlocked. Would you agree?"

Mr Ahern replied: "So I understand." He later said that he had directed "all officials within the Fianna Fail party to fully co-operate" with the tribunal.