Former taoiseach Bertie Ahern has said he was surprised when Manchester-based businessman Michael Wall gave him £30,000 in a briefcase.
Mr Ahern told counsel for the tribunal Henry Murphy SC he was not surprised that Mr Wall was going to make a contribution toward the work required on the house he was to buy at Beresford, but he was surprised by the size of the contribution.
Mr Wall purchased 44 Beresford Avenue, off Griffith Avenue in Drumcondra, in the summer of 1995. He had told the tribunal he wanted to use the house as a base for a coach business he intended to set up in Dublin.
At the time, Mr Ahern was looking for a house to rent in Drumcondra and made an arrangement to rent Beresford from Mr Wall. Mr Wall would stay in the house when he visited Dublin.
Celia Larkin, Mr Ahern's former partner, found the house for Mr Wall and also administered funds used to decorate it.
Mr Wall paid £138,000 for Beresford and invested a considerable sum for improvement works, including almost £30,000 sterling, which he gave to Mr Ahern in a briefcase in December 1994.
Mr Ahern said he interpreted the money from Mr Wall as a gesture of goodwill.
"He was really interested in this, he was going to do a good job of it that's how I interpreted it," he said.
He also said that he expected to become Taoiseach that weekend, but that was "blown out of the water" on the following Monday morning when Geraldine Kennedy wrote a "lovely article" and "Dick Spring ran".
Mr Ahern was referring to the November 1994 decision by former tánaiste and Labour Party leader Dick Spring to pull out of an agreement to support Fianna Fáil in government, after a breakdown in trust surrounding the appointment of Harry Whelehan as attorney general and the handling of critical information surrounding the extradition of paedophile priest Brendan Smyth.
