Labour reaction: Bertie Ahern's explanation of money given to him by businessmen in the early 1990s is "unconvincing" and creates a demand for more answers, Labour Party leader Pat Rabbitte said last night.
"The money was a loan, he says, but it hasn't been repaid 13 years on.
"When does a loan become a gift? Are there tax implications? Most people will find that this stretches credulity," he told journalists in Leinster House last night.
"The performance of the Taoiseach on RTÉ this evening was quite unconvincing. Several versions of events in 1993/94 have been offered by or on behalf of the Taoiseach since the story first appeared in the Irish Times.
"But if this is now Mr Ahern's definitive account, it raises a whole series of new issues. If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it probably is a duck," he said.
Emphasising that he wanted time to reflect overnight on Mr Ahern's interview, Mr Rabbitte focused strongly on the fact that the money has never been repaid, nor has interest been paid upon it.
"If money given to Mr Ahern remains unpaid after 13 years and in respect of which no interest was ever paid either, then it can only be regarded as a gift, and a gift that in all probability would have been liable to tax."
The Taoiseach will have to be judged by the standards he set down when he criticised former Fine Gael minister Michael Lowry after a controversy emerged about loans made to him.
Then, said Mr Rabbitte, Mr Ahern said that Mr Lowry would have to produce "incontrovertible written evidence" that the payments were loans and that arrangements were in place for repayment".
Mr Ahern had told the Dáil in 1996 that "the making of a personal loan on more favourable conditions than would be available from any lending institution would clearly represent a personal favour that ought to be declared".
