Analysis: Bertie Ahern signed a tax designation order on his last day as minister for finance in 1994, writes Colm Keena.
The broadcaster Eamon Dunphy's evidence yesterday concerned comments made to him 10 years ago from which he said he drew certain inferences. As categories of evidence go, such evidence is often at the weaker end of the scale.
Yet Dunphy's evidence has the potential to be significant in the context of the tribunal's ongoing inquiry into the Quarryvale development, and the related matter of the Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern's, personal finances.
Dunphy said that in the course of his unpaid work for developer Owen O'Callaghan in the 1990s, on a project to bring Wimbledon FC to Dublin to play at a stadium O'Callaghan was hoping to build, O'Callaghan made certain comments to him concerning Ahern.
The comments, he said, were made during the period June 1997 to November 1998, after Ahern had become Taoiseach, and before the abandonment of the Wimbledon project. He said comments were made by O'Callaghan about his being wary or sceptical of Ahern and these "crystallised" in his mind after he was told an anecdote by O'Callaghan concerning the securing of tax designation for a development in Athlone in 1994.
Dunphy said O'Callaghan told him Ahern could not be relied upon, and that Ahern had made certain commitments in relation to the Athlone project, but had not delivered on them until the then taoiseach, Albert Reynolds, had "put a gun" to Ahern's head during the dying days of Reynolds' 1994 government.
Reynolds forced Ahern, as minister for finance, to sign an agreed tax designation order for the site of O'Callaghan's development, he said he was told. O'Callaghan, he said, said the order was signed on the "night before they left government".
Dunphy also said he was told by O'Callaghan that he, Ahern, had been "taken care of" or "looked after" in relation to the promised designation.
"The inference I drew was that Mr Ahern had been induced improperly by Mr O'Callaghan to grant tax designation to this project, and had failed to deliver." He said O'Callaghan had never said he'd bribed Ahern, or given him money.
Despite his evidence Dunphy said he considered O'Callaghan to be honest and "thoroughly decent", and O'Callaghan's counsel Paul Sreenan SC asked if Dunphy would, therefore, accept Callaghan's evidence if O'Callaghan in the witness box said Dunphy had drawn honest but mistaken inferences from what he'd said to him 10 years earlier.
"I accept that the inference I drew was an inference," said Dunphy. "And if Mr O'Callaghan were to come in here and say I was mistaken, well, yes, I would accept that." This seemed to significantly weaken Dunphy's evidence but then during subsequent cross-examination by Ahern's counsel Colm Ó hOisín SC, new facts emerged which fitted in with the story Dunphy said he had been told by O'Callaghan.
During an intervention by tribunal counsel Des O'Neill SC, the tribunal was told that tax designation for parts of Athlone was allocated by way of a ministerial order on November 30th, 1994, with Ahern being one of the ministers who signed the order. O'Callaghan's Athlone site, Golden Island, was not covered by the order.
A second order was signed on December 14th, granting designation to the O'Callaghan site. "And I believe that was probably the last ministerial act of Mr Ahern," added O'Neill. "I can't say that it was the last one, but it certainly happened at that time. The change of government then took place on the following day, the 15th of December, without a dissolution of the Dáil."
So the known facts fit in with Dunphy's account of what O'Callaghan said. Whether we'll hear more of the Golden Island designation remains to be seen.