Presentation of figures:The Taoiseach has said that the tribunal's presentation of figures related to one of his lodgements was "unfair and wrong". Fiona Gartlandreports.
Bertie Ahern rejected the contention of tribunal counsel Des O'Neill SC, that a lodgement he made in October 1994 was not made up of a punt and a sterling figure, but was stg£25,000 exactly.
Mr O'Neill produced a table that showed if the lodgement, of IR£24,838.49, was converted using the AIB rate of the day for sums of £2,500 or more, it would produce exactly stg£25,000. It also outlined a number of other figures, with various other exchange rates, which did not give a round sum.
However, Mr Ahern argued that the teller would have had to give him a less favourable rate for the maths to work and he would have had to be "entirely screwed by the bank".
"You put to me that the £24,838.49 was got at by the stg£25,000, but taking a customer getting a rate for £2,500, now I don't accept that," he said. "To think that someone would only get a rate of £2,500, when it's £25,000, where it's 10 times the amount, would be extraordinary."
He said Mr O'Neill's presentation did not stand up and he did not realise he was going into a "mathematical power game".
"I would contend, just for fairness and honesty, that the presentation as you put it is both unfair and wrong," he said.
"I never was a bank official, I don't know how the bank procedures work, but your own presentation . . . doesn't stand up, Mr O'Neill, not to mind that the whole thing is nonsense anyway."
Mr O'Neill said that he noted the Taoiseach's criticism and was sure the tribunal would give due regard to everything he had said.
When pressured to remember the finer details of the day he made the lodgement, on October 11th, he said he had done his best to recall the details.
"There isn't another £25,000 cash lodgement . . . it's not something I'm suggesting you could forget having done," Mr O'Neill said.
"It was a Dáil day, there were a whole range of things - you have my diary, no doubt you have looked at it," he said.
"It wasn't some huge day of my life that I was walking in and I was going to remember for ever more."
"In those days it probably equated to half your salary, being lodged in cash on a particular day," Mr O'Neill said.
"I am not saying I have no recall of it," Mr Ahern replied.