It was on June 30th, 1997 that Mr Denis McCullough SC, counsel for the McCracken (Dunnes Payments) Tribunal, first revealed the existence of a secretive banking system which he christened the "Ansbacher deposits".

The tribunal was resuming its hearings after a break during which it had travelled to the Cayman Islands and made an unsuccessful application to the courts there for information from Ansbacher (Cayman) Ltd, a Cayman Islands bank.

Mr McCullough told a hushed gathering in Dublin Castle that £1.1 million given by Mr Ben Dunne for the benefit of Mr Charles Haughey had ended up in an Ansbacher (Cayman) account held in Guinness & Mahon bank, Dublin. The money was held in the "Ansbacher deposits", a group of coded secretive accounts which at one stage held £38 million. These accounts were operated by the late Mr Des Traynor and were "effectively offshore".

Mr Justice McCracken reported in August 1997. He said the Ansbacher deposits were "made up of monies which had been deposited by persons resident in Ireland with Ansbacher (Cayman) Ltd". Soon after the report was published it emerged that the Revenue Commissioners had no powers to get access to details of the secretive deposits. New powers were granted to the Revenue this year but back in 1997 it seemed the depositors were not going to be caught for tax.

The McCracken tribunal had been charged with looking into reports that Mr Dunne had made payments to Mr Haughey. After it reported, the government decided to establish the Moriarty tribunal to look into Mr Haughey's finances generally. However, controversially, it decided not to require the tribunal to investigate the Ansbacher deposits.

It seemed the Ansbacher account holders could rest easy. Their identity was not going to be disclosed. But in September 1997 the Tanaiste, Ms Harney, announced she was appointing Mr Gerard Ryan as an authorised officer to Celtic Helicopters, to investigate possible breaches of company law. The appointment was on foot of details contained in the McCracken report.

Within a few months, Mr Ryan reported back to Ms Harney that he could not complete his inquiry without access to documents connected with the Ansbacher deposits. He was subsequently appointed to Guinness & Mahon bank and Irish Intercontinental Bank. The latter had taken lodgement of the Ansbacher deposits after they were moved from Guinness & Mahon in the early 1990s. Mr Ryan was subsequently appointed to Ansbacher (Cayman) Ltd, and Hamilton Ross, both Cayman Islands companies. He was also, more recently, appointed to Kentford Securities, an Irish company, and College Trustees, of St Helier, Guernsey.

Inquiries by authorised officers are highly confidential and their reports are not published. It is not known why Mr Ryan's inquiries have taken so long, though according to some sources he has been methodically working through masses of documentation, recreating financial transactions linked to the accounts.

The main architect of the deposits was the late Mr Des Traynor, the former de facto chief executive of Guinness & Mahon bank and founder and former chairman of Ansbacher (Cayman), formerly Guinness Mahon Cayman Trust. It was he who set up the secretive coded system whereby the money owned by the various Irish depositors was recorded in "memorandum accounts" to which he and only a few others had access.

The Moriarty tribunal has recently heard evidence from Mr David Doyle, son of the late hotelier Mr P.V. Doyle, as to how he would give large amounts of money to Mr Traynor for lodgment in his Ansbacher account. Mr Traynor would collect the cheques or drafts during visits to the Berkeley Court or Jurys, hotels he frequented regularly for lunch and business meetings.

Because the deposits were so secretive it is obvious that most depositors were individuals known to Mr Traynor and of high net worth. Mr Traynor was a director of some of the State's largest companies, both private and semi-state.

Mr Ryan completed his report into Ansbacher (Cayman) this week and presented it to Tanaiste, Ms Harney. Yesterday counsel for Ms Harney were granted permission in the High Court to serve papers on the Cayman bank. It is the first step in the appointment of a High Court inspector who would have the power to access documents and interview individuals under oath. It is likely any depositors who become known to the inspector will be interviewed. The reports of inspectors appointed under Section 8 of the Companies Act 1990 are published.