"I confirm that I have no recollection of attending any such meeting. It is my firm belief that I did not attend such a meeting." The Taoiseach in his written statement to the tribunal a few months ago, writes Mark Brennock,Chief Political Correspondent
"If you ask me is it possible that Mr Gilmartin was brought in, over to the ministerial corridor and that someone caught a few Ministers to say hello to someone, of course . . . Do I remember? Not a hope. I do that every day." The Taoiseach in oral evidence to the tribunal yesterday.
Slowly, different accounts and recollections of an alleged meeting between Mr Tom Gilmartin and a group of ministers are beginning to converge. Those who say they remember it still have details that differ, while some former ministers alleged to have been at it insist they were not.
But from a "firm belief" that he had attended no such meeting, Mr Ahern yesterday agreed that he could have attended an informal gathering involving ministers and Mr Gilmartin - but he did not count this as a meeting.
"Of course it could have happened. Where someone knocks at your office and asks you to drop out and say hello to a delegation, or a parish committee . . . I would have 20 of them before my breakfast. I don't call that a meeting . . . If you are saying you are now not talking of a meeting, but a casual chit chat, where Padraig Flynn went around, beat a few offices, those kind of issues take place every hour, on the hour."
The construction of Mr Ahern's answer yesterday amounts to a modification of his position rather than a clear change, and it has three implications favourable to the Taoiseach.
His concession that he could have been at an informal gathering means his evidence does not contradict that of Ms Mary O'Rourke; his insistence that it could not have happened in the room described by Mr Gilmartin ensures he is not agreeing with the developer's account of what happened; and his definition of a "meeting" as excluding such a gathering means he is not contradicting his original statement.
Nothing emerged to suggest that Mr Ahern's possible attendance at this alleged meeting amounted to any wrongdoing, and because of Mr Ahern's failure to recall the gathering, there was no mention of the mystery man in the corridor allegedly seeking £5 million from Mr Gilmartin.
Mr Ahern's concession that it was possible that, in the words of tribunal counsel Mr John Gallagher "an informal casual meeting of some description, a gathering, took place in Leinster House in and around February 1989" followed a quiet, courteous but persistent series of questions from Mr Gallagher.
Counsel for Mr Gilmartin, Mr Hugh O'Neill SC, provided a stark contrast in style to Mr Gallagher. There was an aggressive and disbelieving tone to much of his questioning. If he had been setting out to annoy and discomfit the Taoiseach, he had managed it within a couple of minutes.
His opening questions concentrated solely on trying to get the Taoiseach to repudiate comments by his own counsel that Mr Gilmartin was "shifty" and had given "dishonest" evidence.
He said he hadn't said this himself, wouldn't have used those words, didn't use those words, didn't believe Mr Gilmartin was shifty and dishonest. But the form of words sought by Mr O'Neill - that he repudiated his own counsel's remarks - didn't come.
He also said he had not orchestrated a trawl through Mr Gilmartin's past carried out on behalf of his own legal team. This had resulted in a minor controversy at the tribunal last month and concerned a court case in Cavan in 1977 about land. He said he was not party to a decision to do "a hatchet job" on Mr Gilmartin but did concede that "people checked data".
Mr Gilmartin's description appears to be of a meeting in a block in the Leinster House complex built in the 1960s. Ms O'Rourke has described a meeting in an office off the ministerial corridor in a different location. If she had gone out of the office through a door she said she went out, said Mr Ahern, "she would have fell off the first floor".
He had "a specific recall" of meeting Mr Gilmartin in his constituency office, then above Fagan's pub in Drumcondra, on October 10th, 1988. He knew from his diaries that there were two further meetings - one in his ministerial office three days later on October 13th, 1988, and the other on September 28th, 1989. In his written statement he had no specific recollection of these meetings. Yesterday he had a "vague recollection". He accepts they took place.
Despite Mr O'Neill's sharp-tongued pursuit, he forced no change or shift in Mr Ahern's account of his meetings with Mr Gilmartin. The Taoiseach painted a picture of the depressed, high-unemployment, low-investment 1980s in which it seemed reasonable for government ministers to be meeting developers with hundreds of millions to spend on job-creating projects.
In summary, the Fianna Fáil official position on Mr Gilmartin's claims is now slightly less incredulous. Ms O'Rourke says the meeting happened, the Taoiseach and Mr Albert Reynolds now concede it might have happened. There are more ministers from that period yet to give evidence.
The balance of probabilities may be swinging in favour of the alleged meeting with ministers having taken place after all. However, it has not yet been stated what, if anything, is so wrong about having been at it.
Mr Ahern does not remember being told that Mr Lawlor and Mr Redmond were trying to extract money from him, does not remember being told anything about a £50,000 cheque to Mr Flynn. He does not believe he was told either of these things, and insists he did not ask Mr Gilmartin for any money.
For several years we have been promised that evidence of career- destroying proportions was coming down the tracks. If it is, it hasn't arrived yet.