Taoiseach Bertie Ahern suggested in the Dáil that incorrect bank records had led to the claim that he had lodged $45,000. Mr Ahern said that the AIB branch documentation was relied upon to demonstrate that his evidence was wrong.
"Such an assertion ignores the reality of the evidence already given by bank officials. They have acknowledged that what are known as the 'narratives' on the banking documentation are of no accounting significance and are unreliable.
"They have told the tribunal that it is very possible that the sterling and dollar sums were transcribed on to the wrong sheets, but that this had no accounting significance, because all sums were expressed in Irish pounds, and so long as the Irish pound sums balanced, no issue would arise.
"If $45,000 had been lodged in the branch, the branch would have remitted up that sum to the remit room in bank headquarters. However, the remit room documentation is not consistent with a remittal of $45,000 and, accordingly, the narrative on the documentation in the branch must be wrong. It contains a simple and understandable error and one which the bank is not concerned with because it has no accounting significance.
"That is the type of error that bank officials readily acknowledge can occur. In this case, it has occurred."
Insisting that he had not received $45,000, Mr Ahern said it was the "unvarnished truth", and he was satisfied that his evidence would be vindicated in that regard.
Mr Ahern said that the conclusions of Paddy Stronge, a "distinguished banker", would be based on the evidence and documentation of AIB and not on 67 calculations. "That is why I am now availing of this opportunity to nail the lie that I have somehow failed to establish that there was no $45,000."
He added that Mr Stronge would be giving evidence to the tribunal that the AIB evidence and documentation did not substantiate a lodgement of $45,000.
Mr Ahern said that the lodgements under consideration by the Mahon tribunal started within 30 days of the ending of his matrimonial proceedings, were completed within two years and were the only lodgements being examined in a career of more than 30 years in politics.
"To many, my affairs are unorthodox. That was because my lifestyle - in that dark period - was itself unorthodox. Many who have gone through the trauma of marital separation and legal proceedings will have an empathy with me.
"Mine was not a perfect life in a perfect matrimonial and family environment . . . I was assisted by friends and my affairs were regularised over a long period."
Mr Ahern said that "only a determination by my political foes to stretch the available evidence with malign invention can put a sinister construction on events which. . . were truthfully described in my sworn evidence".
The Taoiseach said he found the obsession about the minutiae of his life very distasteful.
"In Fine Gael, we have a party that deliberately suppressed and concealed a document from the Moriarty tribunal. What lapse of recollection resulted in that?
"Fine Gael is also a party that, conveniently, destroyed its financial records. They preach integrity in public office, a standard they do not match in their conduct."
A Fine Gael public representative had arranged for a complaint to be made about him to the Standards in Public Office Commission and "melted like the snow" when the complaint went nowhere. "For Fine Gael, integrity is a tactic, not a principle."
Tánaiste and Minister for Finance Brian Cowen said that due process should be respected. "What we seek for this Taoiseach, as we would seek for any person before a tribunal, is precisely the same rights and entitlements of any citizen." He urged the Opposition to avoid "judgment by denunciation".
Martin Mansergh (FF, Tipperary South) said that when he had worked with Mr Ahern as an adviser he had found the Taoiseach to be "motivated by public interest. . . integrity and even temperament and, above all, with a basic decency in all the issues with which he was confronted".
