Bertie Ahern told the tribunal he had large amounts of sterling cash in his safe in the early 1990s, writes Colm Keena,Public Affairs Correspondent.
THERE WAS something unpleasant about the laughter that erupted on a number of occasions at the tribunal yesterday as the former taoiseach Bertie Ahern gave new evidence to explain sterling lodgements worth Ir£15,450 to his and his daughters' accounts in 1994.
When he mentioned the fact that some of the sterling may have come from racing bets, there was public laughter. This occurred again when he gave a similar explanation for £8,000 sterling lodged to his daughters' accounts in 1996.
And later again, when Ahern responded gruffly and angrily to a line of questioning from tribunal counsel Des O'Neill SC, and subsequently commented as matters calmed down that O'Neill had "started it", there was further laughter.
Because of the way matters have panned out, the tribunal finds itself having to ask a now former taoiseach probing questions on very personal matters. Some are of the view that Ahern has only himself to blame but his position has to be a deeply uncomfortable one and laughter comes across as cruel.
Ahern last appeared at the tribunal in February and since then his former secretary Gráinne Carruth, on the basis of archival records, has accepted that she must have lodged sterling to Ahern's account with the Irish Permanent Building Society, Drumcondra, on three occasions in 1994.
Ahern had already said the lodgements arose from his salary cheques and Carruth had already said she had never lodged cash for Ahern, but the documents discovered by the tribunal showed sterling cash being lodged and Carruth's name on some of the associated lodgement dockets.
Carruth was famously urged to consider her evidence overnight before she returned to the tribunal for her second day of evidence in March. When she returned she accepted on the basis of the documentary evidence that she must have lodged sterling cash to Ahern's accounts on his instructions. However, she insisted she had no memory of doing so.
Ahern had been served with the documentary evidence 13 days before Carruth entered the witness box, but neither he nor his legal team intervened in any way in what was obviously a very difficult time for Carruth.
It was during the fencing around over this issue between Ahern and O'Neill that the proceedings became most tense yesterday.
Interestingly, in a lengthy statement Ahern supplied to the tribunal on April 18th, he also dealt with the issue of Carruth. He said he thought it was "likely" that the sterling was brought to the building society by his then security officer, who would have accompanied Carruth. He offered this as an explanation as to how Carruth might not be able to recall lodging the sterling. The logic of that is not obvious, but he has yet to be questioned on the matter.
Ahern's new evidence that he accumulated sterling cash savings during the period to 1993, when he had no bank account, is particularly striking given all the correspondence he has had over the past number of years with the tribunal, and all the evidence that has been heard to date, in which he has failed to mention the matter.
He has already been quizzed at length about his evidence that in the same period he accumulated Ir£54,000 in cash savings. His new version of events has the sterling cash sitting alongside the Irish cash, in safes in St Luke's and his ministerial offices.