Haughey was ‘dying’ while settling tax affairs
Minutes of a meeting between his tax agents and the Revenue Commissioners said: “Haughey dying - urgent need to settle.”
Mr Haughey, 80, was diagnosed with inoperable prostate cancer in 1995. Because of his poor health, he was allowed to give some of his evidence to the tribunal behind closed doors.
After talks with tax officials, Mr Haughey paid over £3.94 million (€5m) in August 2003, selling part of his Kinsealy, Co Dublin, estate to raise the money.
The agreement to pay €5m, signed by Mr Haughey on March 18, 2003, was on top of the €1.2m interim payment the former Taoiseach handed over on August 30, 2000.
Mr Haughey told Revenue he had received no gifts since 1997 and was living on bank borrowings.
According to Moriarty Tribunal calculations, Mr Haughey got £8.5m (€10.8m) over the 20 years to 1997. But Mr Haughey’s tax agents claimed the tribunal double-counted some expenditure identified in the McCracken Tribunal.
Under questioning by tribunal lawyer John Coughlan, Revenue official Norman Gillanders defended the way tax officials went about extracting money from Mr Haughey and explained they were dealing with a system of complex and convoluted payments.
Mr Gillanders said Revenue had to assess the risk of going to court and getting a minority of the tax claim. Had they proceeded through litigation and been successful, Revenue estimated getting “a little more than £2m (€2.54m)”.
Mr Haughey avoided having his name published as a tax defaulter, because the penalty imposed for his undeclared tax was below the threshold where the law said it would be published.
But Revenue got his approval to issue a statement on the day they reached the €5m settlement - then the highest individual settlement with Revenue.
