Earth to planet Bertie: it all sounds implausible

SMALL Earthquake in Dublin Castle: No one killed: Taoiseach’s credibility badly injured.

The tremor was localised to just beneath Bertie Ahern’s feet in the witness box where the ground shifted markedly under him.

The rupture was caused by pin-point questioning over the stg£8,000 Mr Ahern says was slipped to him in the bar of Manchester’s Four Seasons Hotel by businessmen so grateful he had just delighted them with one of his famous chit-chats as Minister of Finance that they spontaneously dug 160 stg£50 notes out of their pockets to shower him with in the now infamous “whip-round”.

Unfortunately, the Taoiseach showed an almost Celia Larkin-esque selective memory loss when it came to details regarding the gathering in 1994.

He was sure it took place in April, or May, or September. Yes, definitely one of those three months, but as we all know, it’s a long way from May until September.

When Princess Diana used to give her sons William and Harry £50 notes she called them “pink grannies” as the face of the boys’ grandmother stares out from them.

Sitting in Dublin Castle yesterday afternoon as Mr Ahern fidgeted uncomfortably in his chair, his arms folding defensively before untensing to allow his hands to open and his fingers to jab forward for emphasis, it was impossible not to sense that the tribunal lawyers thought the £50 notes Ahern was on about were more like pink elephants, as in they didn’t really exist.

This was not helped by his change of story regarding one of the curious lodgments to his accounts, despite insisting as recently as April it was definitely comprised of just the IR£16,500 loan from friends and the Manchester cash, he now thought it could have a whole load of other notes mixed in as well. The ground was shifting, it cracked further when the Mahon lawyers produced a calculation showing the money deposited would match exactly stg£25,000 on that day’s trading.

No, insisted the Taoiseach, the only sterling was his tip in the Four Seasons. He remembers the event was in the main hotel restaurant, not a function room (so no record of it then), but the only part of the conservation he could recall regarding the whip-round was one highly convenient sentence when he was told it was a personal gift, not a political one (so he didn’t have to declare it).

Mr Ahern sounded almost boastful the 20 or so ex-pat businessmen at the gathering were worth £50m a piece. Funny then that he can only name three people there (one of whom is now dead). Exactly how many ex-pats worth £50m would there have been in Manchester in 1994?

The tribunal counsel did not have time to delve into the grubbiness of a serving finance minister accepting a wad of cash from such people. However, if Gordon Brown had come to Dublin while Chancellor of the Exchequer to speak to a few millionaires and at the end of the chat they’d turned round a said: “Hey, Gord, here’s eight grand for yourself, have a drink on us”, he would not be prime minister today. In fact the rest of his career would have been measured in hours not years, with his resignation rightly forced before he had time to count the stash.

Like the story regarding Mick Wall and the tortuously involved tale of how his £30,000 travelled from a safe in Manchester into Celia Larkin’s account via a wardrobe at the Aisling Hotel and the bundles of used 20s tumbling onto Mr Ahern’s desk in St Luke’s, it is possible it all happened in the way described.

Just as it is possible Steve Staunton will lead the Republic of Ireland to a 5-0 victory over Brazil in the World Cup final.