Payments to Taoiseach - It’s time to look at more poll issues

TAOISEACH Bertie Ahern issued a statement yesterday complaining that he has been the victim of an unlawful and malicious smear campaign.

He convincingly answered a number of serious questions.

He lamented that these matters, which were supposed to be covered by the Mahon Tribunal, had come into the public domain as a result of leaks.

He felt compelled to deal with them in order to protect his own reputation.

“The motivation behind these leaks is political,” he contended.

That may be so, but he should appreciate that the media had a role to play in asking those questions. Any talk of some kind of media vendetta should be thoroughly scotched.

In December 1996, when Minister Michael Lowry was compelled to resign from the Rainbow Coalition after it was disclosed that a businessman had paid for renovations to his house, Mr Ahern, as leader of Fianna Fáil, insisted that “the public are entitled to an explanation for the unusual character of these arrangements”.

The circumstances surrounding money provided for Mr Ahern for the renovation of the house that he subsequently purchased also needed to be clarified.

Only yesterday Tánaiste Michael McDowell stated in an RTÉ interview that the Taoiseach’s previous depiction for him of the circumstances “differed very substantially from the picture that is now apparently being given by him and by others to the Mahon Tribunal”.

The Tánaiste was demanding “an explanation” on behalf of the electorate. The Taoiseach then provided a comprehensive statement.

At the outset he refuted allegations by Tom Gilmartin that property developer, Owen O’Callaghan, had supposedly paid £80,000 to Mr Ahern between 1989 and 1992. These were third-party allegations, as Mr Gilmartin had not been personally involved, and nobody had produced any supportive evidence.

In relation to the sums of money that he allegedly received, Mr Ahern noted that there has been no pattern of unexplained financial transactions in his dealings and, unlike his early mentor, Charles Haughey, Mr Ahern has lived modestly with no ostentatious show of wealth “and no high lifestyle”.

The period in which he engaged in the controversial transactions with Michael Wall was a period of tremendous uncertainty and great personal turmoil for Mr Ahern.

The previous year he had received a judicial separation from his wife, and he states that he came to a mutually beneficial arrangement with Mr Wall in relation to the purchase of the house in Drumcondra.

Mr Wall was looking to buy a house that he could use on visits to Dublin, and Mr Ahern was anxious to acquire a house in order to prevent the kind of sordid insinuations that were made a couple of years earlier when he was challenging for the leadership of Fianna Fáil. It was said against him then that the people wished to know where their Taoiseach was sleeping.

Following Mr Ahern’s election as leader of Fianna Fáil, Mr Wall agreed to buy the house and rent it to Mr Ahern, with the understanding that he could stay there on his visits to Dublin. It was “a mutually convenient arrangement” between friends.

Mr Ahern subsequently purchased the house off Mr Wall for £180,000, with the bulk of the money coming from a building society mortgage.

He paid the market value, and the fact that Mr Wall had previously been prepared to leave the house to Mr Ahern in his will would seem to be of no consequence.

He explained that Mr Wall handed him £27,700 in cash. The explanation that bringing cash to Ireland “was more convenient” is difficult to understand, and the Taoiseach was rather vague in his explanation of why the amount deposited — £27,772.90 — did not correspond exactly with £30,000 sterling. He said that the money “may have been a mixture of sterling and Irish pounds”.

The tribunal apparently believed that the amount deposited corresponded exactly with the exchange rate on the day for €45,000, but the Taoiseach pointed out the amount deposited would have actually equated to $44,277.68 at the exchange rate of the day.

“It is not a dollar sum,” the Taoiseach insisted. “I never had $45,000 either then, before then or since. There are no dollar transactions in my accounts. I do not deal nor have I ever dealt in dollars.”

In relation to the £5,000 contributed to Mr Ahern by the chief executive of NCB, Pádraic O’Connor, the Taoiseach explained that he believed it was a personal donation because it was furnished in a bank draft, not a NCB cheque.

This does not explain why one of Mr Ahern’s political aides supplied an incorrect invoice, but all the loose threads will not be cleared up at this point.

It is not possible to deal with every aspect of these issues during the heat of a political campaign. The Taoiseach has made a comprehensive statement, which is about as complete as could be expected.

The fine detail and the overall perspective will be matters for the Mahon Tribunal.

Unless somebody comes up with solid contradictory evidence, the politicians, the media, and the public should draw a line under this aspect of the general election campaign.

It is time to move on to other issues.