A £2,000 STERLING donation from a Manchester businessman to aid a Fianna Fáil election campaign ended up in a bank account specifically set up to fund refurbishment work on Bertie Ahern’s constituency office, it emerged yesterday.

FORMER building society manager Blair Hughes told the Mahon Tribunal yesterday he believed Irish punt lodgments to the accounts of the Taoiseach and his daughters came from cash exchanges of stg£15,500.

BERTIE AHERN was today bracing himself for a rough ride as he was due to return to the Mahon Tribunal corruption probe’s witness box.

THE Manchester-based businessman John Kennedy said yesterday he did not intend to mislead the tribunal when he changed his original account of why he gave a cash payment to Bertie Ahern in the early 1990s.

THE widow of one of Bertie Ahern’s dig-out friends expressed relief when a personal cheque she was expecting from the Taoiseach dropped through her letterbox last year, the Mahon Tribunal heard yesterday.

FORMER plasterer Paddy Reilly warned the Mahon Tribunal legal team yesterday not to accuse him of lying over a £16,500 cash “dig-out” he and other friends gave Taoiseach Bertie Ahern in September 1994.

FOR sentimental reasons, Maureen Gunne told the Mahon Tribunal yesterday she has kept Bertie Ahern’s personal cheque for €5,914 — the proceeds of a loan, plus interest — given to the Taoiseach by her late husband Fintan 13 years earlier.

SENIOR banker Philip Murphy suspected a prank when he got a phone call saying Bertie Ahern wanted to talk to him just before Christmas, the planning tribunal has heard.

“HENRY,” purred Celia Larkin, her blonde bob teasing the collar of her powder pink twin suit as she leaned forward slightly in the witness box, “I’m, sorry, Henry, but I’m not very good on dates.”

Seán McCárthaigh recounts some of the evidence given in the witness box by Celia Larkin at the Mahon Tribunal yesterday.

The former partner of Taoiseach Bertie Ahern told the Mahon Tribunal today that she saw bundles of sterling cash on a desk in his constituency office while he was finance minister in 1994.

Manchester based businessman Michael Wall today confirmed to the Mahon Tribunal that he gave Taoiseach Bertie Ahern a briefcase stuffed with about stg£28,000 cash in his Dublin constituency office in 1994.

THE funeral takes place today in Kilmallock of a Co Limerick chemist who died in a road accident near Mallow.

MYSTERY surrounds a stg£30,000 sum Taoiseach Bertie Ahern has told the Mahon Tribunal he acquired at his Dublin bank in 1995.

LOBBYIST Frank Dunlop has insisted he gave a £1,000 bribe in 1993 to Sean Gilbride, then a Fianna Fáil member of Dublin County Council, to sign a rezoning motion on behalf of landowner Paul Walls.

FORMER Justice Minister Nora Owen yesterday denied she had opposed a land development because she feared it would benefit the interests of former Taoiseach Charles Haughey.

THE State’s five-year inquiry into the organ retention scandal may not be able to complete its work because a senior member of the investigation who quit his post has not been replaced.