Taoiseach Bertie Ahern told the Mahon tribunal today he had found some letters from the tribunal "intimidating" and requiring a complete "trawl" of his constituency records.
Mr Ahern also said his voluntary constituency staff were also "intimidated" by correspondence and did not want to find themselves involved with the tribunal.
Tribunal counsel Des O'Neill has outlined correspondence sent to Mr Ahern's lawyers in January seeking details of lodgements and withdrawals to an account at Irish Permanent Building Society in Drumcondra between 1989 and 1992.
Mr Ahern says the account, known as the "BT" account, was opened to handle expenditure on his constituency office building, St Luke's.
In a letter to Mr Ahern in December last, the tribunal sought an explanation of why a £5,000 cheque made payable to him by Davy stockbrokers during a general election campaign in November 1992 was lodged to the BT account and not the Fianna Fáil election expenses account.
The lengthy correspondence also sought full details of a number of withdrawals from the BT account between January 1989 and January 1995. They include a withdrawal of £30,000 in 1993, a withdrawal of £20,000 in 1994, three withdrawals of £5,000 either by cheque or in cash, one withdrawal of £19,000 and another withdrawal of £20,000.
Mr Ahern told the tribunal today he was not familiar with the BT account until he had spent six hours, between 6pm and midnight last Sunday night, examining the records uncovered by voluntary officers in his constituency office.
Mr Ahern said the tribunal request covered "the entire organisation" and it was a "gigantic undertaking" to produce the information requested. He said he found "quite intimidating" tribunal letters which "usually come to me at 8 o'clock on a Friday night".
The information requested in December involved "a trawl through my entire constituency for whatever reason which is intimidating for voluntary officers". The officers were intimidated by the letters from the tribunal, he said. "They do not want to get involved in these kind of issues," he said.
Mr Ahern said his constituency organisation had quite good records, but what the tribunal was seeking a level of detail he did not have available to him. Constituency officers working on a voluntary basis were also working for "other TDs who would probably cut my throat, but that's neither here nor there", Mr Ahern said.
"I am not the BT account," he said. He did not put any money into it or take any money out of it, he told the tribunal. "I did not put Owen O'Callaghan's money into it or anything else."
Tribunal chairman Judge Alan Mahon said he accepted a lot of information was covered by the request. He said he was not suggesting Mr Ahern was "immediately off course" by not providing an immediate reply on every item immediately. But he said some information could have been supplied with the rest to follow later.
Mr Ahern said today his experience was that whenever he gave a short answer to the tribunal "you can guarantee that at about 8 o'clock on a Friday you get about 18 pages back, well, six".