None of Your Damned Business …

… said Bertie Ahern to the Tribunal.

None of the Tribunal's damned business that he had a safe in his office stuffed full of the cash he managed to save during his separation.

None of the Tribunal's business and therefore none of your damned business and none of my damned business.

I see.

Perhaps somebody should remind Bertie of one thing.

Nobody mentioned his marital difficulties until Bertie himself went on the six o'clock news and wept salt tears in front of the nation as he told us about his marriage breakdown. Nobody had said a single word about his marriage until that moment, but when Bertie used it as an excuse for all the money he accepted, he made it a legitimate question.

Ah! thought many people, so that's why you had to take those handouts! You poor, misunderstood thing. And how brave of you to reveal the intimate details of your separation.

How remarkable that, in the midst of all this financial difficulty, he somehow managed to set aside fifty thousand pounds in used notes.

And how imprudent of our Minister for Finance that he didn't feel the need to use a bank for all this money, even though interest rates were approaching twenty per cent at the time.

And how astonishing that he explained this lapse by saying that opening a new account would have proved his marriage was over and he couldn't face up to that reality at the time.

How astounding that we had a finance minister who kept no bank account, was routinely handed bags of money and couldn't face reality.

And how worrying that, in spite of having huge wads of cash all over the place, he found it in his heart to accept gifts of thousands from people, some of whom could barely afford it and some of whom were intimately involved with big business.

And how remarkable that his decisions as Minister for Finance should benefit those very businesses his donors were so closely associated with.

And again, how impressive it was of Bertie that he could save fifty thousand pounds in cash despite his ruinous circumstances.

The same circumstances that he yesterday informed the Tribunal were none of its damned business.

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Tribunal transcripts