‘My wife dealt with banking matters’

BEHIND every successful man there is a woman, it has been said.

Take Padraig Flynn, the retired EU commissioner.

As he bestrode the political stage like a colossus, the purse strings were in safe hands: his wife’s.

The redoubtable Dorothy Flynn was the person who lodged and withdrew the monies, her husband told the Mahon Tribunal yesterday.

“I didn’t frequently go to the bank; that matter was dealt with by my wife,” said Mr Flynn.

Later, when questioned if he’d told her what to do, he replied: “I am not in the practice of giving directions to my wife.” However, they did make their decisions “in consultation”.

In light of that it seemed surreal it should be he who was in the witness box answering the questions.

There was a lot of money sloshing around the Flynn household — or more specifically in the family safe. Monies went in and out, but Mr Flynn has no records to show where. He did concede that he spent an estimated 80% of his income on general election expenses in 1989.

Meanwhile, Ms Flynn had opened an AIB “external account” for herself and Padraig and gave an address in Chiswick, London. Her husband admitted neither of them had lived there at the time — or since. At its high point, in 1989, the account contained more than £71,000.

The quiet-spoken, urbane Mr Flynn positively bristled when tribunal lawyer Patricia Dillon SC suggested this was a “non-resident” account, insisting it was as it said on the tin, sorry, statement.

Frequently, P Flynn adopted a Jesuitical turn of phrase when quizzed at length as to his finances — and how IR£50,000 of Flynn funds came to be withdrawn from a London account.

It got more than confusing when explanation was sought on the composition of £50,000 given to his daughter Beverly — then of National Irish Bank — and invested abroad in sterling and US dollars. (Altogether Beverly invested some £68,000, the tribunal learned.)

Was it in drafts or in cash, part or in whole? You imagined Mr Flynn was silently saying: Why ask me? — I didn’t handle it. When no evidence was shown of any dealings involving drafts, Mr Flynn concurred with the view it must have been cash.

“I always had a practice of keeping cash in my home,” said Mr Flynn, who in a long political career has served as minister for finance and a treasurer of the Fianna Fáil party.

He was vague about how much cash and other instruments were kept in the Castlebar safe, and quibbled with the suggestion that it was a “substantial” amount. “It’s difficult to be precise at this remove to say what was in the safe,” he ventured.

When they moved to Brussels, on P Flynn becoming social affairs commissioner in 1993, the Belgian francs paid for the job were converted to Irish currency — some of which found its way into the “home” safe when the great man returned to Co Mayo.

Mr Flynn returns to the tribunal today for the next tranche of evidence. He can expect a full house as the public gallery has not been as populated since Bertie Ahern was quizzed — also about his personal finances.