The new year opens with the same agenda as the old year ended: Bertie's finances. And the subject is likely to dominate much of 2008 as revelations follow revelations that undermine Bertie Ahern's explanations for the huge lodgements to his bank accounts while he was minister for finance and immediately afterwards.
The issue of Quarryvale is important for it is related to the corruption that is at the heart of society: the denial of basic amenities to deprived communities so as to further enrich the privileged elite. This arose from the abandonment of plans to site a town centre in Neilstown, in favour of building a huge luxury shopping centre at Liffey Valley. It is out of the inquiries into Quarryvale that the question of Bertie Ahern's finances arise.
And the issue I want to pursue today concerns the late solicitor Gerry Brennan, who, according to Bertie, was his close friend and legal representative in the course of his marriage separation litigation from 1987 to 1993. I did not know Gerry Brennan, but from all accounts he was a person of integrity and generosity.
As Bertie's solicitor during the marriage separation process, Gerry Brennan would have been fully aware of Bertie's assets and liabilities. After all, Bertie would have had to swear an affidavit of means in the course of that litigation in which he would have had to state exactly what monies he had, and what other assets as well as his liabilities. And, no doubt, Gerry Brennan, would have arranged from him to swear this on oath as being true.
Bertie has said on a number of occasions that his wife Miriam was fully aware of his finances at the time of the marriage separation proceedings and that means of course that he (Bertie) would have owned up to what he had at the time, including the £54,000 (approximately) he had in savings, held in cash in his safes in St Luke's, Drumcondra and in the Department of Finance.
And, obviously, Gerry Brennan would have had to know about that as well for it would have been included in his affidavit of means.
Gerry Brennan almost certainly was also aware that, for some reason, Bertie arranged a loan for £19,115.97 on December 23rd, 1993, with AIB in O'Connell Street, Dublin. Of this, £1,302.36 related to paying off a car loan taken out by his wife, Miriam; there was a bank draft for £12,813.61, which represented a payment to his own legal team (including Gerry Brennan) in connection with the litigation over his marital separation which had just been concluded a few weeks previously; and there was a bank draft of £5,000 which was his contribution to his wife's legal costs in connection with the marriage separation.
It would have been extraordinary if Bertie had not told Gerry Brennan in advance of his plans to take out this loan and the purposes of it, since Gerry Brennan was the person through whom the legal costs were being paid (he himself was paid out of this loan) and, no doubt, he was the conduit of the information that Miriam Ahern's car loan had to be paid urgently and he surely would have contacted Miriam Ahern's solicitor on December 23rd, after Bertie had taken out the loan, to tell him/her that the cash for the loan was en route by way of a credit transfer.
So, at some stage in 1993 Gerry Brennan would have been aware that Bertie had hoarded away about £54,000 in savings over the previous six years and, more than likely, by mid-December 1993 he would have been aware that Bertie was about to get a bank loan of about £19,000, a total of about £73,000.
Knowing that, Gerry Brennan would have had little reason to think Bertie needed a "dig out" to pay legal bills of £17,813. Even if Gerry Brennan did not know in advance of the £19,115 loan (and it is unlikely he did not know in advance), he still would have known that Bertie was cash rich to the tune of about £54,000.
And yet we are asked to believe that, being the concerned friend he was, Gerry Brennan approached several other friends of Bertie asking for a contribution towards Bertie's legal costs, and instead of getting the £17,813, which represented Bertie's legal costs, he got even more, a total of £22,500.
Note, this is a solicitor asking friends of his client for money, in part to pay him (ie the solicitor), and, in the process, treading on very dangerous ethical/legal grounds in talking about his client's private affairs related to a marriage separation issue.
Is this remotely believable? If Bertie was in financial difficulties and needed a "dig out", he could not have had the £54,000 in savings, in which case the question arises: where did he get the £54,000 in early 1994, when it began to surface in his bank accounts?
Alternatively, of course, Gerry Brennan did not know of the £54,000 in savings because Bertie did not own up to these in his affidavit of means. If this was the case, it raises other questions related to perjury, which, of course, is a crime and crimes are public issues, not private ones and not protected by any in camera rules.