The Taoiseach came under increasing pressure yesterday to make a statement about his personal financial affairs, but he insisted repeatedly that he would not say anything further on the matter during the election campaign. Mr Ahern said he would make a full statement to the Mahon tribunal.
The first call for a full statement before the election from the Taoiseach about his financial affairs came from Green Party leader, Trevor Sargent. Later the Fine Gael leader, Enda Kenny, said that if the Taoiseach did not make a statement, the voters would be entitled to make up their own minds about the matter.
Mr Sargent said that while his party respected the decision of the Mahon tribunal to adjourn until after the election, the public good would be better served if Mr Ahern made a public statement on his financial affairs. "The peculiar nature of Bertie Ahern's financial arrangements demands an effort to clarify matters before the public cast their votes. That's the way a democracy should work," he said.
When questioned by reporters later, the Taoiseach refused to elaborate on a short statement he made on Monday about £30,000stg received by his then partner Celia Larkin in 1994 or his reference to a "stamp duty issue".
Asked to explain how there could have been a stamp duty issue in 1994, when he did not purchase his house until 1997, Mr Ahern said: "Well I will, but I will do it in the Mahon tribunal." When told that Mr Sargent had called for him to make a full statement on the matter he said: "Well they will get it from me at the Mahon tribunal."
Campaigning in Kildare, Mr Kenny said that while he did not intend to make Mr Ahern's private affairs a central issue of the campaign, he felt that the Taoiseach should clear up the matter.
"I don't know the details of Bertie Ahern's finances, and if there are questions they are for him to answer. In any event, the Irish people are going to give their verdict on May 24th. If he decides not to answer any question before the tribunal goes off and hears these things in due course, then people will have to make up their own minds about that."
Tánaiste Michael McDowell meanwhile declined to say how much information Mr Ahern had given him last October during the controversy over money received by Mr Ahern when he was minister for finance in the early 1990s. "I'm not turning myself into a mini-tribunal, nor this election into a public session of the tribunal," he said.
In its economic policy document Fairness and Prosperity, published yesterday, the Green Party made a commitment to reducing both rates of VAT by 1 per cent and to cutting PRSI for employers and employees by half a per cent. An increase in capital gains tax of 5 per cent, a carbon tax and an SSIA-type pension savings scheme were also proposed. The plan is based on a projected annual growth rate of 4 per cent over the next five years.