Sterling has turned up in both the accounts of Bertie Ahern and those of the St Luke's trustees, writes COLM KEENA.
THERE IS a remarkable similarity between what the tribunal is discovering about the financial affairs of the so-called trustees of St Luke's, and the personal financial affairs of the former taoiseach Bertie Ahern.
In both instances, the tribunal has discovered large amounts of cash being lodged and withdrawn from a number of accounts, an absence of documents to support what the tribunal is being told about the origins of this money, and the involvement of sterling.
In both instances, the tribunal is being given evidence of odd or unusual episodes, and this is especially the case where the lodgement of sterling cash is involved.
A simple explanation for the repeated involvement of sterling would be if Ahern, and/or the so-called trustees, had a sterling account somewhere, but the tribunal has been told this is not the case.
There was another odd sterling episode recounted yesterday when Joe Burke, one of the members of the alleged trust, responded to documents from the Irish Permanent Building Society in Drumcondra, which show that a £20,000 cash lodgement to an account called the B/T account, in October 1994, was sterling.
He said he happened to have sterling in his safe at the time which he would use to buy pub bric-a-brac in the UK for pub refurbishments that he was involved in overseeing in Ireland.
When he had to return Ir£20,000 he had been given a few weeks earlier to the B/T account, he decided to use the sterling cash in his safe.
The two currencies were at parity at the time. He said he left the sterling cash in an envelope in St Luke's for trustee colleague Tim Collins, whom it seems lodged the money.
Mr Collins has said in evidence earlier this year than he has no recall of lodging sterling.
It was not until the building society records were discovered that anyone mentioned the involvement of sterling.
Prior to the records being discovered, the tribunal was told the £20,000 cash lodgement was the direct relodgement of an equal amount withdrawn in cash a short time earlier, given to Mr Burke for expenditure on St Luke's, but which in the event had not been used.
Yesterday Mr Burke said he used the sterling because he had in the meantime spent some of the Irish cash on his own affairs.
The episode is in broad outline identical to what Mr Ahern told the tribunal when he was shown bank records indicating the lodgement of £30,000 in sterling cash to one of his personal accounts in AIB in 1995.
He said the money was the relodgement of money he had withdrawn earlier in the year, changed into sterling, and then relodged.
There are other instances of sterling being involved in Mr Ahern's affairs and the affairs of St Luke's.
An opening lodgement of £2,285.71 to the B/T account in January 1989 may have been sterling, Mr Ahern has suggested in private dealings with PricewaterhouseCoopers.
Bank records indicate a lodgement to one of his personal accounts in October 1994 - the same month as the sterling B/T lodgement - was £25,000 sterling, though Mr Ahern disputes this.
He says some of it was sterling he got in Manchester, but that the bulk was Irish currency given to him by friends following a second "dig-out".
And then there is the story of Manchester-based Michael Wall giving £30,000 sterling cash in a briefcase to Ahern in December 1994, during a meeting in St Luke's.
St Luke's is supposedly held in trust for Fianna Fáil. But tribunal counsel Des O'Neill said yesterday it had not, as yet, been shown a trust deed establishing the trust of which Mr Burke and Mr Collins say they are trustees, along with Des Richardson, who is to give evidence next week.