Chawke: £2,500 to Bertie was ‘just a few quid for a friend’
“It was just a few quid for a friend and I wasn’t looking for a receipt,” Mr Chawke told tribunal lawyer Henry Murphy SC. “I gave the money as a goodwill gesture and when I had given it I never thought about it any more.”
Former Fianna Fáil fundraiser Des Richardson and Mr Ahern’s solicitor, the late Gerry Brennan — both of whom were Mr Chawke’s friends — asked if he would contribute to defray Mr Ahern’s legal bills.
Mr Chawke said the money he gave was a gift not a loan: “Some weeks later I met him [Mr Ahern] and he thanked me for it and he outlined he would pay it back. I said don’t worry and he said, ‘I have to’.”
He’d known the Taoiseach for 20 to 25 years, but theirs was not a political friendship. They regularly met at sporting and social occasions and fundraising functions. “Our paths crossed quite a bit,” Mr Chawke said. “Any time he [Mr Ahern] was in the area he would call into The Goat [pub].”
After a robbery at his Goat premises in 2003, Mr Chawke’s right leg had to be amputated. (Last month his attacker got a life sentence.)
Mr Chawke said yesterday he would help people out and give “a thousand or two, or whatever would be needed. If I had it, I would be forthcoming”.
Mr Chawke said Mr Ahern had not told him of taking out a loan in December 1993 to cover his legal expenses, or that he had used the £22,500 raised for another purpose.
Businessman Jim Nugent, another dig-out contributor to Mr Ahern, protested at being asked by the tribunal’s legal team where he had raised the £2,500. “Are my personal finances being examined?” he asked.
Mr Nugent said he had known the Taoiseach for 37 years. “I would have met Bertie Ahern socially around town — I can’t say we were buddies.”
When Gerry Brennan had asked him to contribute towards Mr Ahern’s legal bills he said he had no difficulty in doing so. “I would regard Bertie Ahern as a great friend and if there was anything I could do to help him I would.”
Mr Nugent insisted he had typed and sent a receipt to Mr Ahern, dated December 14, 2006, acknowledging the Taoiseach’s €5,914 repayment cheque.
A third donor, businessman Dave McKenna, gave evidence yesterday. Leaked correspondence between him and the tribunal, published in The Irish Times in September 2006 first revealed the Ahern dig-out.
All three donors said they endorsed Mr Ahern’s repayment cheques and sent them to his constituency office in Drumcondra, earmarked for children’s charity CARI — of which his separated wife Miriam is a fundraiser and patron.
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