Bertie Ahern's landlord took out a will leaving the house to Ahern and his daughters, writes Colm Keena.
THE PROBLEM with Bertie Ahern's evidence on his renting and then buying his current home on Beresford Avenue, Dublin, is that so much of it just doesn't make sense.
The alternative being explored by the tribunal is equally baffling but does fit in with a lot of the known facts. This scenario is that, for some unknown reason, the Manchester-based businessman, Micheál Wall, bought the house as Ahern's nominee in 1995 and entered into an arrangement with Ahern in which Wall pretended to be Ahern's landlord.
The same solicitor, the late Gerry Brennan, acted for both men and the arrangement persisted until the sudden death of Brennan in May 1997, when Ahern was facing a general election campaign that would see him elected taoiseach for the first time.
Soon after being elected to the highest office in the land, Ahern bought the house from Wall, with both men using separate solicitors.
That, of course, is as crazy a scenario as any that has been outlined or explored in Dublin Castle over the past 10 or so years. The problem for Ahern is that it is no less odd than the version of events he would have the tribunal believe.
Ahern's evidence is that he was living in an apartment in St Luke's and wanted somewhere more appropriate given that he was hopeful of becoming taoiseach.
He was minister for finance at the time and had the wherewithal to buy a house but he didn't.
Instead he entered into an agreement with Wall that Wall would buy a house, Ahern would rent it and Wall could use it during his trips to Dublin.
Fair enough, but Ahern says he then told his partner Celia Larkin to lodge £50,000 from his accounts into an account in her name, which she could use to decorate the house. Shortly afterwards, he withdrew this money in cash and paid Larkin from this.
At the time Wall had just placed a deposit on the house, which was to cost £138,000. Ahern says Wall gave him sterling £30,000 in cash, to be used by Larkin to pay for the building of a conservatory. All this months before the house purchase was completed.
In the event Ahern spent £34,000 on decorating a house that had cost £138,000 and which he was to rent, seemingly without a lease. Wall, the evidence indicates, paid for the conservatory and other matters, then simply left the approximately £8,000 of his money that was left over for Ahern to spend as he wanted.
A rare tenant meets an even rarer landlord.
Then, during 1996, Wall, who had been lucky to survive a hit- and-run accident in mid 1995, engaged the services of Brennan to draft a will that was concerned solely with the Beresford house and which left it to Ahern in the event of Wall's death. If Ahern pre-deceased Wall, then the house was to be left to Ahern's daughters "or their survivors".
"I just can't understand it," said Ahern yesterday and in truth, it is very difficult to understand - if Wall, who has his own children, really owned the house.