The former senior inspector of taxes, Mr Tony Mac Carthaigh, remained adamant throughout three hours of intense cross-examination by Mr Dermot Gleeson SC, for AIB, that the Revenue Commissioners had made no deal with the bank on retrospection in relation to DIRT.
Mr Mac Carthaigh agreed there was a deal, a proposal with regard to "a reasonable amount of interest", no penalties, non-publication and, significantly, a payment of tax.
But there was no question of writing off tax arrears, he insisted, despite Mr Gleeson's assertion that AIB witnesses "in something like 20 documents" had indicated that they had an agreement with the Revenue, that there would no retrospection in relation to DIRT.
Mr Gleeson put it to the former senior tax inspector that a deal he had made in 1991, "which is established by the documentary record, had been repudiated later, obliging you to have resort to this utterly absurd conspiracy theory which you, and you alone, have put before the committee". Was there any support for that in any part of the Revenue?
In support of this position Mr Mac Carthaigh produced a document written by a senior inspector of taxes, Mr Tom Tiuit, in which he referred to a meeting between Mr Mac Carthaigh and three officers of the Revenue's Investigation Branch with senior executives of AIB.
This was the focus of much of Mr Gleeson's earlier cross-examination of the senior tax inspector as it was his contention that Mr Mac Carthaigh had a particular agenda in mind in turning up with such an unprecedented number of Revenue officials for such a meeting.
Mr Tiuit's document, entitled AIB Deposit Interest Retention Tax 1986-1991 was written "without any assistance, prompting or otherwise from me", Mr Mac Carthaigh assured the chairman, Mr Jim Mitchell.
It said: "In my opinion, the significance of the meeting of February 13th, 1991, between officers of IB and AIB personnel on the above matter should be viewed against the background prevailing at the time within the AIB group. The intervention by Mr Mac Carthaigh was a godsend to the bank in that it afforded an opportunity to the bank to contrive an arrangement which they now seek to construe as consent by Revenue to an amnesty in respect of DIRT which ought properly to have been remitted to the bank.
"It also prompts the question: What would the bank have done in discharge of its statutory duty to remit the correct DIRT from inception of the legislation had not Mr Mac Carthaigh intervened, bearing in mind that its own senior management was at the very time discussing and quantifying the scale of non-compliance?"
Earlier in the cross-examination, Mr Mac Carthaigh had rejected certain key parts of written submissions to the committee by AIB including a note by Mr Jimmy O'Mahony, group taxation manager, of a phone conversation with the senior tax official, dated March 5th, 1991, which referred to an "amnesty" up to June 30th, 1991: ". . . and the reason it came about was due to a manager [he did not say which bank] having been caught red-handed on `bogus' non-resident deposits.
"It was with the approval of the board of the Revenue Commissioners that inquiry branch were asked to contact all the financial institutions with a view to clearing up the act once and for all."
Mr Mac Carthaigh did not agree with this part of Mr O'Mahony's recollection of their phone conversation. In response to Mr Gleeson, he agreed that he regarded as "spoofery" Mr O'Mahony's estimate in another phone call on April 16th, 1991, as conveyed by him in a memo to his immediate superior, the superintending inspector of taxes, Mr Sean Moriarty, to the effect that "another review of non-resident accounts had been done", and a substantial number had been redesignated as a result, "giving rise to an addition of slightly in excess of £2.5 million to the due payment this month".