The tribunal is to re-examine evidence given by Mr Ray Burke regarding his accounts in light of a letter Mr Burke sent to Mr Justice Flood in which he retracts evidence he gave regarding £15,000 sterling.
The letter, described by tribunal lawyers as an "extraordinary development", was sent by courier to Mr Justice Flood on Monday at 5 p.m. and was handed to him as he left Dublin Castle.
The chairman of the tribunal pointed out the letter had been sent to him directly by Mr Burke and had not come from Mr Burke's solicitors.
The £15,000 sterling was a donation from a source identified in the letter but which was not revealed yesterday. The money was not a deposit which had previously been withdrawn, as Mr Burke told the tribunal in evidence two weeks ago, the letter stated. The parties who made the donation were due to give evidence in the future, the tribunal heard.
"In view of this development now there are a number of further inquiries which require to be made," Mr Patrick Hanratty SC, for the tribunal, said.
Mr Burke had outlined an elaborate series of events on March 1st as an explanation for the £15,000 sterling which had appeared in his bank accounts, said Mr Hanratty. Mr Burke had told the tribunal he arranged with his bank in Jersey, Hill Samuel, to transfer the money to a branch in London. He withdrew the sum in cash on April 9th, 1985. He flew with the money in his hand luggage to Dublin and put it in a safe at home for "ongoing political expenses".
He had said he then changed his mind and decided to deposit the money back into his bank in Jersey. On April 19th he flew to London with the cash and then went on to Jersey. He did not deposit the money directly into his Hill Samuel account but gave it to his solicitors in Jersey, Bedell and Cristin, who deposited it.
Mr Burke had told the tribunal the account into which the money was lodged was itself the source of the lodgement, Mr Hanratty added.
"Mr Burke effectively retracts all of that testimony, every word of it, and suggests an alternative thesis as to where the £15,000 came from involving a person or persons named in the letter," he said.
Mr Burke, meanwhile, has said that as minister for communications, he "binned" an agreement on transmission charges for Century Radio that his own officials had struck with RTE only a month after he agreed it was "not unreasonable".
Mr Burke said the reason he then introduced a directive requiring RTE to lower its charge was because the Independent Radio and Television Commission had advised him Century was not prepared to go on air unless the charge was reduced.
He agreed he had rejected the advice of his civil servants and reached a decision on the basis of his own rationalisation.
Mr Burke said that if there had been the "slightest suggestion" that he was acting outside his legal powers as minister, his civil servants would have alerted him right away. They had not done so.
Mr Burke denied he accepted "lock, stock and barrel" Century Radio's figures for transmission charges.
The figures he came up with in a ministerial directive were a compromise between what Century wanted to pay and what RTE wanted to charge, he said.
"I did not accept lock, stock and barrel what Century were proposing," he said.