Bertie Read online

  The members of the committee dealing with finances for the November 1992 election were Joe Burke, Tim Collins, Paddy Reilly (Paddy the Butcher), deceased, Jimmy Keane, deceased, and Gerry Brennan, deceased. They were also the members of the house committee in the period 1989–95, the tribunal was told.

  The letter from Guidera was the first time the tribunal heard that Ahern was adopting the position that he was not the proper person to answer questions about the affairs of his constituency organisation. Asked later by Des O’Neill if there was a divide between him and his constituency organisation that was such that he was incapable of acquiring constituency documents to assist the tribunal, Ahern said:

  No, there is no difficulty with me getting assistance. But can I say, Mr O’Neill, what I have been dealing with in this tribunal, with the greatest of respect, has been my wife’s accounts, my children’s accounts, my accounts. I haven’t been dealing with the Fianna Fáil accounts. The Fianna Fáil accounts for Dublin Central constituency are under the direction of the constituency, under the offices of the constituency. Of course I work with them. Of course they would co-operate with me. But they are Fianna Fáil constituency or Fianna Fáil business.

  The statement is interesting, since what emerged from the evidence heard by the tribunal was that the Irish Permanent account into which the Davy cheque was lodged was not under the control of the officer board of Ahern’s constituency. Rather, the account was under the sole control of Ahern’s long-time supporter and associate Tim Collins, who wasn’t even a member of Fianna Fáil, let alone an elected constituency officer. Furthermore, the officer board had no control of the account and, as the evidence would in time show, had not known how much was in it until it was told by the tribunal in 2008.

  Bertie Ahern appeared before the tribunal on 21 and 22 February 2008. On 1 February, Ahern’s solicitor wrote to the tribunal asking that the matters concerning the Irish Permanent account be looked at by way of private inquiry before becoming the subject of public evidence. He also said that, ‘as far as our client is concerned, the constituency is properly under the control of the constituency organisation.’ Nevertheless, the hearing went ahead.

  O’Neill queried Ahern about O’Connor’s evidence that he had been worried that, in December 1993, Richardson might have approached other rival stockbroking firms. He told him about the tribunal’s decision to write to eleven other stockbroking firms and about the responses it had received. Ahern’s counsel, Conor Maguire, intervened and said he was very concerned that he had not been told of their responses. He should have been, he argued, and he asked that the tribunal rise to allow him to consider the matter. He argued that Ahern should not be asked about the Davy cheque, because he had not been told that the other stockbroking firms were being written to; but the chairperson rejected the application. When Ahern replied that the Davy cheque would have been recorded by the constituency organisation when it had been received, O’Neill asked him if he had those records with him. Ahern said he didn’t. O’Neill asked why not. ‘Because I don’t have constituency records. It’s Fianna Fáil constituency accounts. And I do not have Fianna Fáil constituency accounts, but I know it’s recorded.’ This was the first the public heard of a division that had apparently emerged between Ahern and his famously supportive constituency organisation.

  The Irish Permanent account into which the Davy cheque had been lodged was called simply ‘B/T’. This had not been mentioned publicly until Ahern’s appearance on 21 February, nor had the fact that Tim Collins had opened the account during the 1989 general election campaign. Collins was the sole signatory. When opening the account he had stipulated that the statements on the account be kept in the branch. He also signed a declaration stating that the funds belonged to him personally and that he was not holding them as nominee for any other party. The tribunal had ascertained all these facts by the time of Ahern’s appearance, because it had been able to get certain documents from the Irish Permanent files. Neither Ahern nor his constituency organisation had provided the tribunal with anything at this point.

  Ahern, during questioning from the chairperson, Judge Alan Mahon, said that there was a list available of the political donations received in 1992 and that the Davy contribution was on it. He said Davy had donated £5,000; some of it had gone into the 1992 election account and some into ‘the building trust account, that is a call they [the officers of the constituency] make, where the money goes.’ In other words, Ahern was saying that the initials on the Irish Permanent account stood for ‘building trust’ and that the decision about whether a political donation went into the election account or the B/T account was determined by the officers of the constituency.

  When O’Neill asked Ahern for the whereabouts of the documents the tribunal had sought from him on 30 November, he said, ‘In the hands of Fianna Fáil party Dublin Central . . . I am not here answering for Fianna Fáil Dublin Central. Fianna Fáil Dublin Central have their own system. I can co-operate and I can assist.’

  When the chairperson said he would have assumed that the committee and the constituency would co-operate with Ahern and provide him with documents (even if, legally, he could not instruct them to do so), he appeared to agree. O’Neill suggested that the documents could be brought to Dublin Castle from St Luke’s during the lunch break and produced at two o’clock. Ahern said it would not be possible, and O’Neill suggested that it be produced by 10 a.m. the next day.

  Ahern was asked at one point if he would have a role in the decision to put money received into the ‘election account’ or the ‘building trust account’. He said he would not. ‘That is why we have a democratic organisation and we elect officers, and people work hard to do that.’ O’Neill then asked him if this was a reference to the treasurers of the constituency organisation.

  The officers, well, normally. The officers of the Comhairle Dáil Ceantair are the elected officer board. In an election they normally would ask—somebody would take on the responsibility. Now it’s an election agent. Then somebody would take on the responsibility of trying to gather funds and they would be the signatory of the account.

  Ahern disclosed that, during the 1992 election, Tim Collins had opened an ‘election account’. O’Neill asked if this was the only election account. Ahern replied, ‘Yeah, well, the Comhairle Dáil Ceantair perhaps could have also a separate election account.’

  In time it would emerge that the elected constituency officers had indeed opened an account for the 1992 general election. By the end of the campaign the account run by the officers was in the red, while the account run by Collins had a substantial balance.

  Ahern said the accounts for the 1992 election were ‘not necessarily’ run by the treasurers. The election account was run by the finance committee. The secretary of that committee was Collins, and the account was in his name, he said. Ahern could not say if Collins was a member of a particular cumann. In fact Collins was never a member of Fianna Fáil.

  Ahern said Collins was elected to the trust that was set up when money was being raised to buy St Luke’s.

  The trust was set up by those who donated to the trust. And he was appointed by them to be secretary of the trust. The trust was run by the Cumann O’Donovan Rossa committee, which he was secretary of, and the finance committee at that time was linked to that, and he was secretary. He was effectively secretary of the trust when all the work was being done to set up the trust.

  According to the Byrne memorandum, considered in the previous chapter, the persons who established the trust and who contributed the funds to St Luke’s were part of a grouping called the St Luke’s Club. As we have seen, Collins was asked about this term when he appeared before the tribunal, and he gave the impression that he had never heard of such a club.

  Ahern was asked about the fact that the account name was simply the initials B/T. He said the constituency used a lot of initials. By way of example he mentioned CDC, for Comhairle Dáil Ceantair. O’Neill said he was specifically referring to initi
als being used for the names of bank accounts. Ahern said there was the CODR (Cumann O’Donovan Rossa) account, and O’Neill’s reaction showed that this was another account he hadn’t heard of before.

  ‘You haven’t discovered that to the tribunal,’ he said.

  ‘Because it’s not my account,’ Ahern replied.

  The only accounts he had disclosed that were not personal accounts were accounts into which money was lodged to ‘elect me’, Ahern declared. The other constituency accounts did not hold money for his benefit.

  O’Neill made the point that if Collins had died in the early 1990s the money in the B/T account would have formed part of his personal estate. Ahern said that Collins’s family ‘are not like that.’ He said the officers of the constituency knew over the years that the money in the account was connected to St Luke’s. If it had ended up in Collins’s estate ‘his wife would have been on to one of our officers in five minutes to give it back.’

  No Comhairle Dáil Ceantair document was ever produced to the tribunal in which the constituency organisation recorded the existence of the B/T account in the 1990s. In 1995 the ‘rainbow’ Government, headed by John Bruton of Fine Gael, introduced legislation that established new controls over political fund-raising. One of the stipulations was that each constituency organisation had to nominate an account into which all political donations were deposited. It also had to nominate a party officer who would liaise with a newly established Standards in Public Office Commission in relation to the operation of the account. The lodgements to the B/T account ceased with the coming into effect of the new legislation in 1995, and the account remained untouched until 2008 and its discovery by the tribunal.

  In 1995 the address on the B/T account was changed to Collins’s home address in Malahide from the ‘care of the branch’ address that had previously been in use. Ahern said that in about 1995 or 1996 Collins began to suffer health problems and withdrew from much of his work connected with St Luke’s. He said responsibility for the B/T account was taken over by a new Comhairle Dáil Ceantair officer, Dominic Dillane, but he later amended this evidence when Dillane brought it to his attention that he had not joined Fianna Fáil until 1999. Ahern gave no evidence about who he believed was in charge of the B/T account on behalf of the constituency organisation from 1995 to 1999. Dillane told the tribunal that he had learnt of the account on being appointed Comhairle Dáil Ceantair treasurer a year or so after joining the party. He became active with the party after he had met Royston Brady when the latter was canvassing for it. Brady believes that Ahern selected Dillane to be constituency treasurer precisely because he had no personal knowledge of matters that occurred before his becoming involved with the party. Information discreetly disclosed by Brady to reporters during the Ahern payments crisis had come from Dillane to Brady years earlier, according to Brady, who sometimes socialised with Dillane. In 2003 Dillane was appointed a director of Fáilte Ireland, the state tourism board.

  At the time of Ahern’s appearance before the tribunal the balance in the B/T account, which had not been touched since 1995, was €47,803.52. Ahern said the purpose of the B/T account was to hold money so that it would be available if it was needed for work on St Luke’s. In fact up to €200,000 had been spent on the renovation and maintenance of St Luke’s since it was purchased in 1987, but none of it had come from the B/T account. Most of the lodgements were large, round-figure amounts, including lodgements of £5,000 every January between 1993 and 1995. Ahern was questioned about these during his February appearances.

  As we have seen, the tribunal had sought a written explanation from Ahern on 30 November 2007 about the lodgements and withdrawals on the B/T account. As Judge Mahon explained to Ahern’s counsel during the February sittings, because the tribunal had not received the answers it had sought by way of correspondence, it decided to seek them by the direct questioning of Ahern in the witness box. The chairperson said the tribunal had warned Ahern before his appearances in the witness box in late December that it might ask him about the B/T account.

  Where information is not furnished to the tribunal in a timely fashion, it often necessitates the convening of a public sitting of the tribunal to obtain such information by way of sworn evidence before the tribunal.

  As Mr Ahern was scheduled to give evidence on 20th and 21st December 2007, he was notified of the fact that the tribunal intended to take his sworn evidence in relation to this issue. Furthermore, Mr Ahern was notified of the fact that should his evidence fail to be completed, he would be questioned on this issue when he returned to give evidence to the tribunal.

  It is now 22nd February 2008, almost three months since the tribunal’s initial request for information concerning the then named BT account. Accordingly the tribunal does not believe that it is in any way premature to conduct public hearings for the purposes of taking Mr Ahern’s sworn evidence in relation to this account.

  Ahern was able to give explanations for most of the lodgements and withdrawals on the B/T account when O’Neill asked about them. He said the lodgements, bar one, were political donations or funds raised by golf classics. The withdrawals were expenses relating to his constituency operation. One withdrawal, of £20,000 in cash, arose from a decision to get some work done on St Luke’s. Subsequently a decision was made not to go ahead with the work, he said, and a short time later the £20,000 in cash was relodged.

  The cheque of 30 March 1993 to the solicitor Patrick O’Sullivan was a decision of the house committee, he said, to give a loan to a member of staff. Three elderly relatives of the staff member were afraid that the house in which they had been living for a long period was going to be sold. They had tenancy rights but were afraid that a new owner would move other tenants in to live with them. The loan was advanced to the staff member so that the house could be purchased. There was no charge on the house, Ahern said. Asked when the loan had to be repaid, he said, ‘That was worked out with the officers, but in fact it hadn’t got to be repaid for a period; but the individuals opted to pay it back, and they have.’ Asked when, he said, ‘In recent times, certainly not years. In the recent past. Weeks or months, but recently.’ He agreed it was in the period since the tribunal had first queried the matter.

  On the second of Ahern’s February appearances O’Neill said it had been expected that he would produce certain documents by 10 a.m. but that this had not happened. Rather, a letter had been received from Ahern’s solicitor, Liam Guidera, at 9:30 a.m. informing the tribunal that the documents were the property of the Fianna Fáil constituency organisation, not of Ahern. The letter also suggested that the matter of the B/T account should not be pursued in public hearings for the time being.

  My client has passed on to the constituency officers his exhortation that the requests of the tribunal be complied with if possible. However I understand that the constituency officers wish to consult with their legal representatives in that regard. It is hoped that this will not delay matters unduly. However in the circumstances I must reiterate the observations by Mr Maguire senior counsel [for Ahern] that these are matters which are the subject of an ongoing and unfinished private inquiry. It would be far more sensible to attempt to address the tribunal’s queries by way of correspondence and private interview in the first instance, rather than by way of what we consider will transpire to be an unnecessary public hearing.

  When Ahern said he understood that the constituency officers would consult their solicitor, and in time make the documents available, O’Neill asked, ‘On what basis is that understanding founded, Mr Ahern?’

  Ahern said he had briefly met a number of the senior officers of the constituency the previous night and told them they should work to make the data being sought by the tribunal available as soon as possible. ‘And they, as I understand it, they are meeting their own solicitor, and they are working to make that data available.’

  Ahern said he had no new documents in his possession.

  They have told me that they are going to give all of t
he information that we’ve gathered over the last few weeks. And they want to discuss that with their solicitor. And they are going to get it to the tribunal as quickly as they can. And that’s what they are endeavouring to do . . . They are preparing those documents, but they have been advised that those documents must go to their own solicitor before they can come to the tribunal. That’s what they informed me.

  He said the constituency officers declined to give the documents to him for this reason. ‘I don’t think that they have any other difficulty,’ he said.

  The tribunal had received a letter from another solicitor, Hugh Millar, before the sitting. Millar also asked that matters relating to the B/T account not be aired in public that day, because the issue had still to be properly canvassed in private. Nevertheless, the hearing went ahead.

  Ahern told O’Neill that when he got the letter of 30 November 2007 from the tribunal concerning the Davy cheque it had been immediately apparent that the Irish Permanent account, into which the £5,000 cheque had been lodged, was the B/T account. He said he had not been able to contact Tim Collins ‘because he was in the United States.’ Ahern got in touch with the Drumcondra branch of the Irish Permanent, seeking details on the account, but the manager—who called over to St Luke’s, having been asked to do so by Ahern’s secretary, Sandra Cullagh—said he would need formal instructions from the account-holder. Ahern said he then asked Joe Burke to take up the matter, because Burke was the ‘chairman of the house committee’. He said he might not have told his solicitors about the B/T account, since he was getting ready for his appearances at the tribunal on 21 and 22 December.