CELIA LARKIN has told the Mahon tribunal she was given €40,000 earlier this year by her former partner Bertie Ahern so she could repay money to Fianna Fáil's Dublin Central organisation.
Mr Ahern gave her the money as a short-term loan, she said, and she later took out a second mortgage on her new home and repaid Mr Ahern.
Ms Larkin was giving evidence as part of the tribunal's ongoing inquiry into the finances of the former taoiseach. Mr Ahern returns to the witness box today and is scheduled to give evidence over three days.
Ms Larkin said she decided to repay the money she had received from Fianna Fáil Dublin Central in 1993 after a journalist called to the house where her elderly aunt lived in December last year and queries were made about the house. "It was to protect her because she was agitated by people calling to the house."
Ms Larkin said her decision to repay the money, which amounted to €45,510 when interest was added, was not motivated by the fact that the tribunal had discovered the building society account from which the £30,000 had been given to her.
The money came from an account called the B/T account which has been dormant since 1995 and had a balance earlier this year of approximately €47,000.
Ms Larkin said she was given the money by the trustees of St Luke's, Drumcondra, as a loan, after they had learned that elderly relatives of hers were long-term tenants of a house that was being put up for sale.
She used the money to purchase the house and is now its legal owner. One aunt still lives in the house.
Ms Larkin said the money was given to her on the basis it was a loan that could be recalled. She said she was told of the offer of the loan by the late Gerry Brennan, solicitor to Mr Ahern, and that the money was coming from the "building trust of the St Luke's account".
She said Mr Ahern knew of her aunts' difficulties and that she told him of the loan after it had been received. She said she did not ask Mr Ahern for a loan at the time and did not know he had £50,000 in accumulated cash savings. She repaid the loan with interest and the final figure was supplied to her by Mr Ahern.
Ms Larkin was also asked yesterday about her role in the purchase of Mr Ahern's current home in Beresford Avenue, Drumcondra. She told Henry Murphy SC, for the tribunal, that it never crossed her mind at the time that Micheál Wall bought the house on behalf of Mr Ahern or using Mr Ahern's money.
She did not know how much the house Mr Ahern moved into in 1995 cost, though she viewed and selected it. She had not known at the time that in 1996 Mr Wall had drafted a will in which he left the house to Mr Ahern. Asked what her reaction had been when she had learned about the will in recent times, Ms Larkin said: "I didn't think about it."
The tribunal heard that Ms Larkin was involved in lodging more than £78,000 to two accounts in her name which she said was to be used on the renovation and refurbishment of the house, which cost £138,000. Asked about the size of the lodgements relative to the price of the house, she said it wasn't something she had thought about at the time.