Widow kept Ahern’s cheque for sentimentality

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.

“Fintan would have considered himself a friend of Bertie Ahern,” said Ms Gunne yesterday. “They would have met at matches and socially.”

Ms Gunne and her children decided not to cash Mr Ahern’s cheque issued in September 2006 but to write a cheque for the same amount and send it to the Mater Hospital’s cancer research unit, which had treated the well-known Dublin auctioneer who died in October 1997.