£8,000 won on horses put into daughters’ accounts

FORMER taoiseach Bertie Ahern said he won £8,000 gambling on horses in 1996 and lodged the sterling sum into the bank account of his daughters, Cecelia and Georgina.

Giving evidence in the Mahon tribunal yesterday for the first time since resigning as taoiseach, Mr Ahern explained that the £8,000 paid into his daughters’ accounts were the result of successful bets placed on horses in Britain.

He was responding to questions on whether he was involved in any sterling transactions greater than £1,000 in the 1990s, other than the lodgments totalling £15,450 in 1994, which were being probed by the inquiry.