Source of money used to purchase St Luke's a mystery

MAHON TRIBUNAL:THE SENIOR treasurer of former taoiseach Bertie Ahern's constituency has said he cannot identify the account from which St Luke's was purchased.

St Luke's, Mr Ahern's constituency office in Drumcondra, was purchased in May 1988 for £56,000, the Mahon tribunal was told. However, none of the accounts disclosed to the tribunal have shown where the money came from.

Dominic Dillane, lecturer at Dublin Institute of Technology and senior treasurer for Dublin Central constituency, attended the inquiry yesterday after signing affidavits on behalf of the constituency, the O'Donovan Rossa cumann, and the trustees of St Luke's.

Counsel for the tribunal, Henry Murphy SC, said the Cumann O'Donovan Rossa account, opened in January 1988, had been identified to the tribunal as the account into which money to purchase St Luke's was lodged.

However, there was no withdrawal of £56,000 traceable to that account.

Mr Dillane said the issues all predated him "by a long shot".

"I was in secondary school, not even living in Dublin at the time," he said.

"Are you being landed with it, Mr Dillane, is that the problem?" Mr Murphy asked. "No, I'm not being landed with it," Mr Dillane replied.

Mr Murphy asked Mr Dillane if he could confirm there was an account from which the £56,000 was paid.

"I'd have to check . . . I understood that was from one of the election accounts," Mr Dillane said. "The tribunal doesn't see an account out of which £56,000 or anything like it goes out at that date or around that date ," Mr Murphy said.

"We are still getting that off the banks," Mr Dillane replied.

Mr Murphy said the tribunal already had the constituency accounts and asked if there might have been other accounts not disclosed to the tribunal.

Mr Dillane said all of the background to the purchase of St Luke's was in a report dated May 1997, found in a filing cabinet by a volunteer the day before Mr Ahern resigned as taoiseach.

The report on the acquisition, legal ownership and funding of St Luke's, was put together in advance of the general election, and was written by David Byrne, who was made attorney general later that year.

It was written with the late Gerry Brennan, who was Mr Ahern's solicitor, to help handle queries about St Luke's from journalists, the tribunal was told.

Mr Dillane said the document proved that the "B/T" in the "B/T account", which had been scrutinised by the tribunal, in fact stood for building trust and not Bertie and Tim , which had been suggested.

The inquiry also heard that Mr Dillane had said, when he gave evidence in March, that details of five accounts would have been given to constituency members at their annual general meetings and a record of this would be available from minutes.

However, Mr Murphy said the minutes of these meetings, disclosed to the tribunal, did not record details of any of these accounts. The tribunal was also told that Mr Ahern met PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) in 2001 and asked them to prepare income and expenditure accounts for one of the bank accounts, known as the No 1 Constituency Account.

Mr Dillane said he was told that afterwards, the back-up documents provided to prepare the accounts were destroyed, in accordance with advice from PwC.

"After Mr Ahern has his discussion with Pricewaterhouse someone directs that all the background information should be destroyed?"

"Yeah, there was no need to keep it," Mr Dillane said.