If there were no digouts, then there was a conspiracy

ANALYSIS: THE FINDINGS of the Mahon tribunal in relation to Bertie Ahern's evidence concerning his personal finances come as no surprise.

Ahern’s evidence about not using bank accounts in the period 1987 to 1993 – his first lengthy period in high office – and accumulating large amounts of cash in safes in St Luke’s and the Department of Finance, was always hard to credit.

His evidence that on the weekend of December 5th, 1994, the Manchester businessman Micheal Wall delivered £30,000 in sterling cash to him in St Luke’s, which he transferred to a safe as his then partner Celia Larkin brought the men tea, was similarly jaw-dropping.

When the tribunal sourced documents from the archives of AIB concerning the purported lodgement by Larkin of the cash on the following Monday, they indicated that no such large amount of sterling was lodged.

However, the documents indicated an unusual amount of non-sterling foreign currency was lodged, and that the punt amount involved – £28,772.90 – was the exact equivalent of $45,000 using the exchange rate on the day.

Likewise the dealings Ahern had with Wall over the ownership of the former taoiseach’s current home on Beresford Avenue, Drumcondra, were always bizarre.

Wall said he bought the house for £138,000 in 1995, but let Ahern live there. However, in 1996 Wall made a will leaving the house to Ahern and, in the event of Ahern predeceasing Wall, to Ahern’s two daughters.

The tribunal came to the conclusion that the house was always beneficially owned by Ahern.

Public confidence in Ahern’s evidence collapsed after new sterling lodgements popped up when the tribunal sourced archival documents from the Irish Permanent, and Ahern resorted to swearing that he had won the sterling at horse meetings in England.

The key question that arises, of course, is what it all means.

One point is absolutely clear. Ahern, taoiseach from 1997 to 2008, made a series of substantial lodgements to bank accounts in the mid-1990s which he didn’t want to explain. At its broadest, the amount in total is close to a quarter of a million pounds.

Ahern has chosen not to explain truthfully and so speculation as to where the money came from will probably continue for years.

Likewise, we remain none the wiser as to where Ahern kept his earnings in the years 1987 to 1993.

The tribunal never found one instance of where a particular paycheque to Ahern could be seen being lodged to an account, even during 1994 when he opened a series of bank accounts.

Ahern has only himself to blame if people come to believe that he was a politician on the take, just like his mentor, former Fianna Fáil leader and taoiseach, the late Charles Haughey, at whose graveside Ahern gave such an effusive oration in June 2006.

Political events may have spooked Ahern into opening bank accounts in December 1993 and entering into his bizarre arrangement with Wall over the Beresford house a year later.

Another factor may have been his dealings with his wife, with whom he concluded a separation agreement in late 1993.

In 1994 Ahern was minister for finance and expected he would soon replace Albert Reynolds as party leader and taoiseach.

He was apparently concerned his living arrangements might work against him – he was separated from his wife but

had no established home of his own – and when the Reynolds government unexpectedly collapsed in late 1994, he

may have decided he needed to quickly organise a home he could point to.

Why he apparently arranged to have Wall front as the owner of the Beresford house is not clear. However, it could be that Ahern did not want to suddenly produce money which he had up to then squirrelled away somewhere. Whatever the reason was, Ahern chose not to disclose it to the Mahon tribunal.

Another issue arises from the tribunal’s findings that there were no digouts in 1993 and 1994.

A succession of people gave evidence of making large contributions to these digouts. They said they sourced the money from cash they had at home or in their places of business, and so had no records to support their claims.

If the tribunal is correct in rejecting their evidence, it follows that someone organised the evidence, in a conspiracy to mislead the tribunal, waste its time and waste public money.

The legal cost implications for people who have been found to have given misleading evidence is an issue which must now play out.

Ahern spent years playing a cat and mouse game with the tribunal, first in private and then in public. These were the same years when his government allowed an economic boom develop into a bubble. The extent to which the pressures and distractions of his dealings with the tribunal affected the running of the country must remain a matter of speculation.