AT THE beef tribunal in 1992, Fine Gael and Mr John Bruton painted a picture of him as a party leader considerably removed from fundraising activities. At the Dunnes payments tribunal yesterday, Mr Bruton painted a picture of himself as a party leader centrally involved in a major fund raising drive to ease a financial crisis within Fine Gael during the previous year.
A spokesman for Mr Bruton said last night that Mr Bruton's evidence to the beef tribunal referred to a period relevant to the beef tribunal and before he was party leader. He pointed to the fact that in his evidence to the beef tribunal Mr Bruton had made it clear that he had not been involved in party fund raising during that period. According to his spokesman, he had merely been outlining the situation that he thought had obtained during that time.
Fine Gael first wrote to the beef tribunal explaining the situation regarding fundraising: "Matters of fundraising and financial contributions to the party are currently dealt with, and indeed have been dealt with since the early 1980s, by one of the trustees of Fine Gael, Mr Sean Murray, and while other members or officers of the party might have a limited amount of information on such matters, only the aforementioned trustee, Mr Sean Murray, can deal authoritatively, and effectively with queries. Mr Bruton described this letter as correct.
At the beef tribunal, Mr Bruton was asked if he as leader, or other politicians within his party, were made aware of the particular political contributions that are made to Fine Gael by a company or person.
"No," he said. "Now that's not to say that one might not on a random basis become aware of contributions that are made by particular individuals, but there is no systematic informing of politicians of contributions, and in fact my understanding is that it has always been the case that this particular trustee doesn't disclose the information to anybody as a general rule, not even the party leader of the time.
This may have been the case during the beef tribunal period, but Mr Bruton himself had known a different regime. It was clear from Mr Bruton's evidence yesterday that shortly after he became leader he "became aware of contributions that are made by particular individuals" on more than a "random basis".
He said he was aware of the contributions that had been made as a result of his personal approaches to people, and he revealed that the number of such approaches by him was extensive.
Apart from his visit to Mr Ben Dunne's home in April 1991, during which he was given a £50,000 cheque, he made "numerous approaches to senior people in business in 1991" and was "intensively involved in this matter" because of the party debt at the time of £1.3 million.
He met some, and spoke on the telephone or wrote to others. He had contacted "well over loo" such people during 1991 and 1994, and he said that he may have met some besides Mr Dunne in their homes. His spokesman said last night that most of these contacts had been made in 1994, after his evidence to the beef tribunal.
In 1992, at the beef tribunal, Mr Bruton was asked by his own counsel whether he personally received contributions "at election times or at other times". He replied: "It was at election time. And these contributions were not sought by me at all, entirely unsolicited, but people would just make contributions which would be used towards the local campaign, or passed on to party headquarters, depending."
Again, his evidence yesterday revealed that whatever about the period to which the beef tribunal referred, during 1991 he received contributions at other than election times, and that he was very active in soliciting such contributions.
When his beef tribunal testimony was put to him yesterday Mr Bruton said that then he had been talking then about the normal situation that applied within the Fine Gael party. In 1991, however, he said the situation was far from normal as the party had such a huge debt. It would not be normal for the leader to be very involved in fundraising in previous times, he said, but the party's financial situation was so grave in 1991 that there was a requirement that "everybody who could assist would assist".
"I believe I was referring to the situation at another time," Mr Bruton said, explaining his beef tribunal evidence. "Contributions which were the subject of the beef tribunal were being discussed. At that time the party was not in any particular difficulty and at that time the party leader was not being informed. The circumstance is applied at a different time.
But while it may not have been "normal" for the party leader to have such involvement in raising money from corporate donors prior to 1991, it became clear during the evidence of Mr Bruton's predecessor, Mr Alan Dukes, that he had just such an involvement.
He wrote perhaps 200 letters to business people, he said, seeking contributions. He met around a dozen such people and had dinners with, perhaps, "two or three" besides Mr Ben Dunne. Again, Mr Dukes's fundraising activity was not carried out during the period covered by the beef tribunal, but his evidence yesterday, together with Mr Bruton's, painted a picture of a Fine Gael leader centrally involved in fundraising in the way Mr Bruton's did not.
Mr Bruton, Mr Dukes and the others all denied that donors of large amounts of money had greater access to them than others. They all repeated several times that no favours had been sought by Mr Dunne from Fine Gael and that none had been offered, a point Mr Dunne made several times during his evidence last week.
We also got a glimpse yesterday of how important Mr Michael Lowry was to Fine Gael and individual party candidates in terms of raising funds from Mr Dunne.
He was present in Mr Dunne's house when Mr Bruton received the £50,000 cheque, having arranged the meeting. He gave Michael Noonan £3,000 from Mr Dunne towards his 1992 general election expenses. He rang Mr Ivan Yates one day during the 1992 campaign to tell him there was £5,000 cash from Mr Dunne for his election expenses waiting to be collected by him at a Dublin hotel.
And all this from Mr Dunne who, according to Mr Yates, "didn't seem to be particularly interested in politics".