Mr Bertie Ahern pre-signed all the cheques on the Fianna Fail leader's allowance account, Mr Charles Haughey's former private secretary, Ms Eileen Foy, told the Moriarty tribunal yesterday.
Ms Foy, who administered the leader's allowance account, said it was "normal procedure" to have pre-signed cheques.
Ms Foy, who gave evidence to the tribunal earlier in the year, appeared again yesterday to respond to fresh queries put to her by the tribunal's legal team.
Ms Foy was questioned by Mr John Coughlan SC for the tribunal, about her recollection of various cheques drawn on the leader's allowance account while she worked as Mr Haughey's private secretary. In response to the questioning, Ms Foy stressed repeatedly that she was working on memory and could not recollect details of the transactions.
"I'd be well out of here if I had a wonderful memory of what happened 10, 12, 13 years ago", she said.
In reply to questioning about a cheque made out to the AIB for £8,332.32 on February 4th, 1991, Ms Foy said she had "absolutely no reason to believe that it would have been anything other than a pre-signed cheque. We were dealing with people who were very busy and it was normal procedure to have pre-signed cheques."
Asked if there was anything about the cheque that would make her believe it was one of those pre-signed by Mr Ahern, Ms Foy said: "I think if you check back on the previous statement I made, you'll find, I think that Bertie Ahern pre-signed all the cheques."
She said she recognised the name Charvet, but did not have any specific recollection of sending French franc payments to the company. She agreed that if the payments were being made on foot of an invoice, she presumed she would have sent the French franc cheque by post to the address on the invoice.
The tribunal also heard that a £10,000 cheque from Celtic Helicopters' Dublin Airport account made payable to cash probably ended up in the account of Ms Maureen Haughey at the Educational Building Society. Counsel for the tribunal, Mr Jerry Healy SC, said the Celtic Helicopters' cheque was associated with a £10,000 cheque payment from the Irish Permanent Building Society, made out to Mr Charles Haughey as a political donation. The cheque was lodged to Celtic Helicopters' bank account at Dublin Airport and the company then wrote a cheque for £10,000 on November 7th, 1990, signed by its co-directors, Mr John Barnacle and Mr Ciaran Haughey, Mr Charles Haughey's son.
Mr Barnacle already told the tribunal the cheque could only have been due to the cancellation of a block prepayment of flying hours, Mr Healy said.
The tribunal heard the cheque was negotiated at National Irish Bank, the clearing bank at the time for the EBS branch where Ms Haughey had her account. The back of the cheque was signed M. Haughey, and her EBS account number was written on it. The tribunal was shown a copy of Ms Haughey's EBS account statement, with a £10,000 lodgement made on November 9th, 1990.