Haughey reveals he has a taste for waffles

There was a lot of waffling at the tribunal yesterday.

It started when counsel raised a 1979 meeting at which the AIB claimed Mr Haughey "waffled a bit about the sale of a field" near his home. An "inelegant expression", Mr John Coughlan SC called it, but he needn't have worried. Mr Haughey seized on the word like an old friend and thereafter wouldn't let it go.

When the bank's memo of the meeting referred to a development at Baldoyle which Mr Haughey allegedly claimed would yield him £200,000, the witness quickly reached for the w-word. He had no idea what the development could have been, had never been involved in such a development and could only suggest he had confused his bank manager: "He does say I'm waffling."

Unapologetic now, Mr Coughlan countered that the waffle reference had been in a separate paragraph, on a separate issue. No matter, replied Mr Haughey: "When one waffles at a meeting, one waffles."

Evidence to date suggests the former Taoiseach has bank officials for breakfast. But he was certainly enjoying his waffles yesterday. Asked about yet another promise to the bank to sell off part of his estate, he smiled. He was "reluctant to say it" but this too may have been "in the waffle department".

Mr Haughey was social welfare minister when his bank manager visited for that meeting. He was in Leinster House when the manager called again, four months later, in June 1979.

The bank was proposing a deal by now: a cash settlement of £767,000. Mr Haughey proposed his own - £400,000 - and also mentioned the possibility that the AIB could be offered a £10 million deposit from an Iraqi bank. He played this down yesterday, suggesting it was an incidental matter - that he was merely passing on to the bank an offer made by an Iraqi health delegation which had recently visited.

After a petulant exchange about the AIB's "scrappy" handwritten note of the meeting, Mr Coughlan suggested it was "incredible" that the mention of the deposit was not meant to influence his standing with the bank. Mr Haughey found it "incredible" to suggest otherwise.

When Mr Justice Moriarty made a rare intervention, asking if the £10 million might have been a more suitable subject to raise with bank headquarters, Mr Haughey agreed it might.

Of another reference in the bank manager's note: "End of year crucial in politics. Trying to discount (1) value of deposit (2) potential of leadership," Mr Haughey - who would be Taoiseach by Christmas - had no explanation, not even waffling. He could only suggest he and the manager had ended the meeting with a discussion of the political situation. "They were very interesting times in politics."