Bertie Page 9

  On Monday 11 February, Cullagh phoned McGrath and said there were some additional accounts that Ahern wanted work done on, and, as a result, McGrath attended at St Luke’s on the Wednesday. She was given documents relating to accounts associated with the 1989 and 1992 elections, including bank statements, lists of donations, compliments slips from donors and a small number of purchase invoices. Cullagh asked that the work be done on site. McGrath understood that the work had to do with Ahern’s dealings with the tribunal.

  The following day McGrath was asked if she could meet Ahern on Friday 15 February, and she did so at two in the afternoon in St Luke’s. Ahern said he was still looking for information on four lodgements of £5,000 to the B/T account, but he thought some of them might be from the same source. During the meeting, McGrath later told the tribunal, they were interrupted by Cullagh, who said Tim Collins had been on the phone regarding information he was searching for in connection with the accounts being prepared. Ahern asked Cullagh to ask Collins to keep looking.

  Ahern asked McGrath to print out the work she had done on updating the No. 1 account and also to begin work, on site, on another account, the CODR account. He called it the Cumann O’Donovan Rossa account, although it was later to emerge at the tribunal that the account had no link whatsoever with the cumann. Ahern asked her to cover the period 1988–2004 but later amended this instruction and asked her to work up to 1995 only. Ahern assisted her and provided her with bank statements and a bank deposit book. He told her that one withdrawal of £30,000 from the account was for Walsh Maguire Engineers and was a payment on account for work on the renovation of St Luke’s.

  On 18 February, McGrath handed over bound draft reports on the B/T, CODR and No. 1 accounts, as well as the 1989 and 1992 election accounts. The books were collected by arrangement from the PWC offices by a driver from St Luke’s two days before Ahern appeared at the tribunal and said he had ‘exhorted’ the constituency officers to co-operate with its urgent request for information. McGrath later told the tribunal that the vast bulk of the information in her final work on the accounts was contained in the draft accounts delivered on 18 February. She also said she had encountered no difficulties arising from constituency officers saying she could not be given information before it was cleared with the constituency’s solicitors. All the information, of course, had come to her through Ahern.

  McGrath also said she had not known that the 1992 ‘Fianna Fáil election account’ referred to in her draft report was, in the bank documents, called the ‘Tim Collins Fianna Fáil election account’ or that the reference to Collins had been ‘redacted or obliterated’ from the documents given to her. Nor did she know that the address had also been altered. It had read ‘Tim Collins, St Luke’s,’ on the bank documents but simply ‘St Luke’s’ on the documents shown to her. Furthermore, she did not know that in 1992 a separate election account had been opened under the auspices of the Comhairle Dáil Ceantair officers.

  McGrath told O’Neill that Ahern had told her the initials on the CODR account stood for Cumann O’Donovan Rossa. The address for the deposit account was the Secretary, CODR, 146 Lower Drumcondra Road. O’Neill said the secretary of the cumann had told the tribunal that the account had nothing whatsoever to do with the cumann. McGrath said she hadn’t known this.

  In time it became clear that Ahern had, under oath in the witness box, misled the tribunal about his knowledge concerning Celia Larkin’s ‘repayment’ of the money that had been given to her from the B/T account. He had told Judge Mahon that the money had been repaid in the period ‘since Christmas’ and that his knowledge came from constituency officers. In fact, as Larkin revealed in her evidence, she had dealt directly with Ahern in relation to the matter. The money had been repaid with interest, and Ahern had supplied Larkin with the figure that constituted the original amount plus the interest that would have been received had the money remained on deposit in the Irish Permanent. Not only that: Larkin had borrowed the money from Ahern before writing her cheque to the constituency.

  Ahern was asked about this in June, when he was back giving evidence again. O’Neill read into the record his evidence from 21 February and explained that, on that day, the tribunal had not known that the payment to the solicitor, O’Sullivan, had to do with a loan to a member of staff at St Luke’s, or that that person was Larkin. Ahern, when asked about the matter, had given a clear impression that his knowledge that the money had been repaid ‘recently’ had come to him from the trustees. Yet Larkin’s evidence made it clear that she had dealt directly with Ahern and had left a signed blank cheque into St Luke’s. This was filled in later by Cullagh when Larkin supplied her with the figure, which in turn Ahern had supplied to Larkin. Celia Larkin also said that Ahern had loaned her the money so that she could make the payment. Larkin’s evidence on the matter was read out by O’Neill, with Ahern in the witness box.

  You were the person, not the trustees, who had all of the dealings with Ms Larkin. You calculated the interest that was due and to a particular date. Your secretary completed the cheque supposedly on the 4th of February of this year.

  Given all this, how could Ahern, when asked by the chairperson when the money had been paid back, have replied, ‘I asked one of the officers yesterday, and they said in the period since Christmas’?

  Ahern said Larkin had paid the money back to the treasurers, leaving the cheque in St Luke’s. ‘I wasn’t sitting around St Luke’s watching what day anyone would come in. I wasn’t there at all. I was in Government Buildings.’

  On 20 May 2008 the tribunal heard from a number of witnesses who had worked in the Irish Permanent, Drumcondra, during the 1990s. First up was Lisa Jordan, a senior administrator in the bank’s head office, who had worked in Drumcondra since June 1991. She said she had been aware of the B/T account and of the fact that it was Collins who operated it. She said the passbook on the account was kept in the branch, and when Collins came in to do a transaction the book would be fetched from safe keeping.

  I would remember Mr Collins coming into the branch. He would have been a chatty customer . . . I recollect an occasion prior to . . . 1993 that Mr Collins, in a jocular manner, when asking for the passbook on the B/T account, referred to it . . . as the Bertie Ahern/Tim Collins account. I am certain that this was said in a jocular manner.

  Asked about her recollection, she said someone had gone to retrieve the passbook,

  and they were a bit confused as to where it was, and he said, ‘Oh, it’s the Bertie/Tim account’, and they were like, ‘What’s it under?’ you know? So I would have said, ‘It’s just the B/T.’ And that’s it.

  Jordan said she did not recall dealing with anyone other than Collins in relation to the account. She had never heard the account being referred to as the building trust account, nor was she ever aware of the account having any connection with Fianna Fáil.

  While Jordan’s evidence dealt almost exclusively with the B/T account, it was mentioned that her statement also included the following:

  I was aware that Mr Collins operated an account number 50165547 in the name of himself and Desmond Richardson. In 1992 I dealt with transactions on this account on the following dates.

  The reading into the record stopped there, though a tribunal barrister Henry Murphy said Jordan had gone on to set out ‘twenty transactions between the 3rd of January and the 5th of October 1992.’

  When the matter was raised briefly in evidence Jordan said the Collins and Richardson account was referred to in the branch as the ‘D/T’ account (indicating Des and Tim). A transaction dated January 1992, which bank documents showed she was involved with, contained a reference to the account in initials: D/T. The transaction involved a cheque that was being made payable to a third party, and Collins’s signature appeared on the bank record.

  The next witness was Elizabeth Smyth. Jordan believed that Smyth had heard Collins’s remark in the early 1990s concerning the ‘Bertie and Tim’ account. Smyth had worked in the Drumcondra branch from
1991 to 1996. ‘I remember Tim Collins well,’ she said.

  I would describe Mr Collins as gregarious, with a word for anybody. I would have seen him not only in the branch but around Drumcondra and in Kennedy’s public house, where he would often be on a Friday evening with Mr Ahern and other friends of Mr Ahern.

  It was my understanding from conversations in the branch, including some with Mr Collins, that the B/T account was an account operated by Mr Collins and that the B/T stood for Bertie and Tim. I recollect Mr Collins would ask for the passbook for the account, which was kept for safe keeping in the branch. I do not recollect any reference to the B/T account as being a building trust account. I believed the only connection of the B/T account to Fianna Fáil was that Mr Ahern was a minister and a Fianna Fáil TD.

  Smyth said that, in the branch,

  it was known that the account belonged to Mr Collins and that Bertie Ahern was also on the account but that Mr Collins did all the work on it. He was the one that came into the branch, he would be the one to ask for the book and so on . . . In the branch it was common knowledge that [B/T stood for] Bertie and Tim . . . The reason why I remembered it in the sense as much as I can was that it was Bertie Ahern who was a minister at the time. So I was quite young at the time, so it was impressive to be working on a minister’s account . . . I think it was spoken about at the branch as to who or what B/T stood for and what it was about, because you couldn’t just keep doing withdrawals or lodgements to an account and not know who or what the set-up of the account was. So I have a vague recollection that it was discussed in the branch, and my impression of what I can remember was that it belonged to Bertie and Tim and that’s what the B/T stood for.

  Blair Hughes, the manager of the Irish Permanent, Drumcondra, from 1993 to 1996, also gave evidence about the B/T account. He said he used to sit at a desk on the ground floor of the open-plan area of the branch office. ‘If I was in the branch and saw Mr Collins I would approach him and have a chat. I would on occasion complete a withdrawal or lodgement docket for Mr Collins while talking to him and hand it to the teller to complete the transaction.’

  Hughes said he knew that Collins operated an account in the branch under the initials B/T. ‘I had no reason to believe that this account was operated for or on behalf of the Fianna Fáil party, the local cumann, or that it related to a building trust.’ He said he assumed it was Collins’s account. ‘I just made an assumption that B and T stood for Bertie and Tim. I had no other evidence to say it was anyone else’s account.’ He said he knew of the association between Ahern and Collins—knew them to be close friends rather than political associates. ‘I may have been advised by people in the branch when I arrived that had experience with it [the account], I don’t know. But I cannot remember actually discussing it with anybody. It was just an assumption on my part, whether that be right or wrong.’

  Tim Collins gave evidence on 13 March 2008. Collins had a relatively small business at about the time he opened the B/T account, but he prospered during the years of the economic boom and the associated property bubble. He eventually became a successful property scout and property investor, among other things, and was a witness before the planning tribunal on matters other than those concerning Ahern. Since he had not been named as a contributor to any of the Ahern dig-outs, he had not been called during the earlier hearings, concerned with Ahern’s finances.

  Collins told the tribunal that the B/T account was set up as a contingency fund—a ‘sinking fund’ that would be there in case money was ever needed for St Luke’s. He agreed that funds used for St Luke’s had come from other accounts when there had been money available in the B/T account and also that, although there had been significant withdrawals from the B/T account over the years, there were never any withdrawals for the purpose of maintaining or renovating St Luke’s.

  A number of facts appeared to be at odds with Collins’s description of what the B/T account was for and of how the Davy Stockbrokers cheque came to be lodged to it. Firstly, there was the question of why the cheque wasn’t lodged to any account until two-and-a-half months after it was issued. It was issued on 11 November 1992 and lodged on 31 January 1993. At the time it was received, the fund-raisers could not have known that they were going to receive funds in excess of what could be required for the campaign. Collins said he had no recollection of discussing the Davy cheque with Ahern or of how it came to be decided that it would be lodged to the B/T account. According to Collins:

  The B/T account, and I will say this until the day I die, is a sinking fund in the event of anything ever happening to Mr Ahern, that the trustees that would be left alive wouldn’t have to pick up any tab on the house, any debt that would be left on it. And that was my view at the time and [also the view of] another person on the committee.

  O’Neill pointed out that the bound PWC report on the B/T account, which had been given to the tribunal by solicitors acting for the Comhairle Dáil Ceantair and the trustees, had described the purpose of the account as administering funds ‘for the maintenance and upkeep of the property known as St Luke’s.’ When Collins was asked if he had given a description of what the account was for to the accountants from PWC he said he hadn’t spoken to anyone from PWC. He also said he hadn’t seen the documents prepared by PWC before they were given to the tribunal.

  Asked about the building trust, Collins said the trustees were the same as the St Luke’s trustees, save that Brennan was a trustee (of the B/T account) and Richardson wasn’t. ‘Richardson wasn’t on the house committee,’ Collins said by way of explanation for Richardson not being on the building trust.

  ‘Did you intend opening an account for the building trustees?’ O’Neill asked.

  ‘No. It was for the house committee.’

  ‘I see. Is there any reason why you didn’t have H/C then, perhaps, as the name of the account, because it’s not an account of the building trustees?’

  ‘I have no . . . There is no reason why it’s not H/C, it’s just that I put B/T for building trust.’

  Collins said he had no reason for not giving St Luke’s as the address on the account, nor had he any reason for electing to have the statements on the account kept in the branch. The account was opened nineteen years before Collins appeared to give evidence, and the address on the account from 1995 had been of Collins’s home. He had not mentioned the account in a sworn affidavit of discovery that he had made to the tribunal in 2006. The discovery order included an obligation on him to reveal all accounts into which he had lodged funds. This meant that both Collins and Ahern had left the B/T account out of the list of accounts they had declared to the tribunal after having been served with orders of discovery. Collins said he hadn’t forgotten about the B/T account, which was still in existence with funds on deposit in it, at the time of his sworn affidavit in 2006; but he accepted that the wording of the order of discovery encompassed the B/T account.

  Asked when he had last discussed the account with any of the people he said were trustees of the account, Collins replied, ‘Oh, it’s many years ago. I’d say I’ve been out of circulation around there now for about thirteen years.’ The sole surviving member of the house committee from the mid-1990s was Joe Burke. ‘I haven’t spoken to Joe Burke in a long while,’ Collins said.

  A mortgage of £75,000 on St Luke’s was taken out in 2000, at a time when there was £47,000 in the B/T account and, according to the evidence given to the tribunal, a loan of £30,000 plus interest out to Larkin. The mortgage was used for substantial work on St Luke’s. Collins’s reply seemed to be that it was decided that constituency workers should be let raise funds to repay the mortgage. He said to O’Neill:

  I understand what you’re saying . . . that we should have paid it off with the money that was there; but we always wanted to have a sinking fund there, and that’s why we kept it there. When the work had to be done, let the people go out and fund-raise to pay for that.

  Collins was asked about the cash withdrawal of £20,000 the tribu
nal had been told was made to pay people who were going to carry out work on St Luke’s but which had been returned some months later after it was decided not to go ahead with it.

  I took the money out, and Joe Burke, being a builder, I left the money for Joe to see could he have it sorted out. And he got professional advice on it over the period of time to say that the job was too great and too big, that that wouldn’t be able to sort it out . . . He wanted cash to be able to pay people if he wanted to get a job done in a hurry.

  Collins said he left the cash for Burke in an envelope in St Luke’s.

  My recollection is that I brought it to St Luke’s and left it in the office. And whoever was there, I can’t recall who was there, [I] said, ‘There, make sure Joe Burke gets that.’

  He said he had no recollection of relodging the money.

  Collins was asked about the joint account he had in the Irish Permanent in Drumcondra with Des Richardson. This account had also been left out of the sworn affidavit of discovery that he had made in 2006. He accepted that he should have told the tribunal about the account. ‘I had completely forgotten about that,’ he said. The names on the account, opened in July 1991, were Des Richardson and Tim Collins. At the time the two men were involved in what Collins said was a small architectural practice called Pilgrim Associates. The account was operated until 1993. Of the 151 withdrawal slips the tribunal retrieved from the bank’s archives, the name of the account was described as D/T on 46 of them, O’Neill said. The initials stood for Des and Tim, Collins agreed, but he said it was not the case that B/T stood for Bertie and Tim.

  When Liam Cooper, a party activist, gave evidence, he told the tribunal something of the history of the O’Donovan Rossa Cumann. He had been active in Fianna Fáil politics in Dublin Central since the early 1980s and was a member of the cumann. It was one of the oldest in Fianna Fáil and could trace its ancestry to Fenian times. It was originally a Fenian cell, he claimed, named after Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa, who, he pointed out, was buried in Glasnevin Cemetery. The cell subsequently became a Sinn Féin cumann in the early twentieth century. Following the foundation of Fianna Fáil in 1926 the Sinn Féin O’Donovan Rossa Cumann transferred en masse to Fianna Fáil. ‘It has been the focal point for Fianna Fáil activity in the Drumcondra area since the 1920s.’