Mr Oliver Barry, Century Radio's co-founder, could not recall whether he had made a £66,000 contribution on behalf of his partner Mr John Mulhern into the company's capital account, he told the Flood tribunal yesterday.
Mr Barry was responding to questions from Mr Patrick Hanratty SC in the light of commitments by himself, Mr Mulhern and Mr James Stafford to subscribe £825,000 of Century's £900,000 paid-up capital. Mr Hanratty referred Mr Barry to a memo compiled by Century's former financial director, Ms Noreen Hynes, which showed the actual contributions from each of the partners on May 8th, 1990, along with the shortfall of £90,000.
The first item in the document showed that Mr Barry had made a contribution of £33,000 on March 15th, 1989, from the QAM (Quality Artistes Management) account. A second payment of £66,667 had been made on behalf of Mr Mulhern. That appeared to have come from the QAM account. Mr Hanratty asked: "Did you make it for Mr Mulhern?"
"No," replied Mr Barry.
Yet the QAM account revealed a debit item of £66,667 had been paid out on March 1st, 1989, Mr Hanratty persisted, "and there had been a corresponding credit on April 3rd, suggesting that you might have paid it for Mr Mulhern and that he reimbursed you".
That was possible, Mr Barry conceded.
On Monday Mr Barry apologised to the tribunal for the fact that he had concealed from the Independent Radio and Television Commission that Mr Mulhern - son-in-law of former Taoiseach Charles Haughey - was a shareholder in Century.
Counsel focused in particular on a number of "expenses" items accruing to Mr Barry and Mr Stafford from Century. They included the £35,000 paid to Mr Ray Burke TD and two items of £5,000 each paid to RTE and Fianna Fail respectively.
A number of difficulties arose in reconciling the exact position of the company's three main investors - relative to their subscribed capital plus expenses - in the documents before the tribunal. Mr Barry said the matter was too serious "to be engaging in assumptions" and undertook to come up with satisfactory answers to a list of outstanding queries, to which the tribunal agreed.