Two payments totalling more than £500,000 for the benefit of Mr Charles Haughey were written off by Dunnes Stores five years ago, the tribunal was told yesterday.
Mr Patrick O'Donoghue, a company director and secretary, said the 1987 payments - the first to Tripleplan Ltd for £282,500 sterling (£309,220.29) and the second to Mr John Furze for £205,000 - had been "fully provided for" in Dunnes accounts.
Effectively, he said, they had been written off by Dunnes Stores Ireland Ltd in the period up to January 1994, some time before the company had fully established their purpose. Mr O'Donoghue said company management did not carry out its own investigation into the source of the cheques but relied on its auditors, Oliver Freaney & Co, to do so.
Mr O'Donoghue said that in December 1996 he initiated his own inquiry into whether any further payments of a similar nature had been made. He contacted Mr Matt Price, the Dunnes Stores executive in Bangor, Co Down, who had issued both cheques. Mr Price sent him a list of not-normal payments made from the Northern branch. The second item on that list was the Tripleplan cheque.
Mr O'Donoghue said he took this information to the auditor, Mr Kevin Drumgoole, who told him the two cheques in question had already been recorded in the Dublin accounts.
He then dropped the inquiry as his intention was to look for "new information which had not been previously identified". He said he did not attempt to discover the identity of Tripleplan Ltd as Oliver Freaney & Co were involved in a search.
"There was little point in duplicating the effort," he said.
In FEBRUARY last year, the auditors discovered the identity of Tripleplan, and that its directors were the Cayman bankers Mr John Furze and Mr John Collins. He said this search was carried out as the lack of knowledge was preventing the auditors from completing the accounts.
"In late 1997, we decided to finalise the one remaining company that needed to be finalised, which was Dunnes Stores Ireland, so we made every effort to bring that company to a conclusion."
Earlier, Mr John Coughlan, counsel to the tribunal, said an issue had arisen in relation to the Tripleplan cheque which would require the matter being revisited.
He said he was seeking to obtain certain documentation, adding that Mr Ben Dunne and Mr Noel Fox would be recalled to give further evidence on the payment.
