Larkin: I never thought Bertie corrupt

Bertie Ahern’s former partner has said she is “desolate that the evidence of the man I once shared my life with” was not accepted by the Mahon Tribunal.

Celia Larkin said the tribunal’s finding was “damning” but said she had taken “some solace from the fact that having found a number of people to be corrupt, the tribunal has not named Bertie Ahern among them”.

Celia Larkin’s long-standing relationship with the former taoiseach ended nearly 10 years ago after which she relocated from Dublin to Killaloe in Co Clare.

In her first comments since the publication of the Mahon Report, she told The Sunday Independent that she “never, in all my years with Bertie, thought him to be corrupt”.

She said: “He could be vague, he could be evasive, belligerent and sometimes downright rude as with his ‘That’s who I was in bed with last night’ comment in 2002 when our relationship was beginning to crumble.

“But corruption is not something I ever thought him guilty of.”

Speaking about her own involvement in the tribunal, Ms Larkin said she had “every receipt that I should have had in relation to the house at Beresford”.

“Ultimately, my evidence was clear, supported and accepted — it was about what I did with any money handed to me by my partner,” she said.

However, she described the tribunal’s requests for dated financial records as “an unnecessary intrusion into my personal life” and “like a murder trial where my every movement of the past 15 years would be scrutinised”.

“There seemed to be no guidelines like there are in a court of law. Everything was fair game, relevant or not,” she said.

As a witness, she believed she had “no rights”.

Requests for discovery came to her solicitor, she said, with unrealistic timelines and if the required documentation was not supplied within the stated timeframe, often days, an order of discovery was immediately sought from her bank.

This, she said, “gave the impression to the institution [bank] that I had refused to cooperate. I felt intimidated. I had to constantly remind myself that I was only a witness, not to take it personally”.

Ms Larkin said the only way she could have fought the tribunal’s requests for personal information was through the courts.

However, this, was “a cost I couldn’t afford to incur”, she said.