The Mahon Tribunal has heard that there was more than IRE £28,000 in a Bertie Ahern election account two weeks after the 1992 general election.

The account was in the name of Tim Collins, a close friend of the Taoiseach.

A separate Fianna Fáil election account only contained £1,500 pounds at the same time.

The tribunal has also been hearing details from Mr Collins about the mysterious B/T account from which Celia Larkin received a £30,000 loan in 1993.

The account had £7,285 lodged in it when it was opened in 1989.

Mr Collins said this was a "sinking fund" or rainy-day account so that if anything happened to Mr Ahern, the trustees of his office would not be liable for debts.

Is that not a pathetic and unbelievable excuse, I mean why would a sinking fund be set up for a minister, or the Trustees of his office who were Joe Burke, Des Richardson and Tim Collins all of who were never going to be in financial difficulty especially himself considering his involvement in the Battle of the Boyne purchase.

I mean here is a little biography of all 3 of these trustees:

DES RICHARDSON

Though his home boasts one of the southside's toniest addresses, Torquay Road in Foxrock, Fianna Fail's former chief fundraiser (1993-1999) is the best-known member of the Drumcondra set. A contributor to Bertie's Dublin whipround in the same year that he set up an office in the Berkeley Court Hotel to eradicate Fianna Fail's debt by raising IR2.5m, he organises the annual Fianna Fail tent at the Galway Races, a magnet for wealthy builders happy to be seen supporting the party.

He became friendly with Bertie Ahern in the 1970s through following Shamrock Rovers and accompanied him to Manchester in September 1994 when a number of businessmen donated stg8,000 to the then finance minister.

A member of the fundraising committee in the taoiseach's O'Donovan Rossa Cumann in Drumcondra, he was appointed to the board of Aer Lingus by Mary O'Rourke, where he remained until 2000.

He is the former chairman of Dave McKenna's Marlborough Recruitment and held shares in a consultancy firm called Berraway Ltd, with an address in Upper Mount Street which is also occupied by Frank Dunlop's PR company. (Richardson has given evidence at the planning tribunal about his relationship with Dunlop, the former government press secretary who disbursed bribes for planning permissions. ) Berraway was dissolved in 1999.

TIM COLLINS

An activist in Dublin Central since the 1970s and a trustee of St Luke's, Collins' occupation is described as "land agent".

He was appointed to the board of Enterprise Ireland in 1998, after Bertie Ahern was first elected taoiseach.

Judge Alan Mahon described as "extraordinary" his lapse of memory during his initial appearance at the planning tribunal when questioned about his role in the OPW's purchase of the Battle of the Boyne site for 9.4m from the Fyffes-owning McCann family. The McCanns had acquired the site only a few months earlier for 3.4m.

Collins' finder's fee for the deal was 600,000.

His name surfaced in another context at the planning tribunal last year when it emerged that he had introduced Frank Dunlop to one of three business men seeking rezoning of land at Dublin Airport.

Bertie Ahern informed the Dail that it was Tim Collins who accompanied him to a meeting in the Department of Labour in 1988 with the Luton-based property developer, Tom Gilmartin, while the latter was trying to develop Bachelor's Walk and Quarryvale in Dublin.

Collins and Des Richardson were directors of a company called the Pilgrim Group which provided consultancy services to property developers.

JOE BURKE

A FORMER Dublin city councillor, Burke's building company, J&H Burke & Son, went into liquidation last December. It specialised in renovating pubs. A resident of Malahide in north county Dublin, he was controversially appointed chairman of the Dublin Port Company in 2002 and his 15,200-a-year tenure is due to expire on 26 April next.

The taoiseach defended the appointment on the grounds that his friend had "a number of attributes", including his wife's family, who was "very involved in the port, is from the port and lived in the port".

Burke is a frequent doorstep canvasser for Bertie in the constituency and a member of the fundraising committee of the O'Donovan Rossa Cumann. The taoiseach told the Dail that Joe Burke met Tom Gilmartin in St Luke's in 1989 on his behalf while the Luton-based developer was trying to build shopping centres in Quarryvale and Bachelor's Walk.

These 3 men have all benefitted from being associated with this man, in fact 2 of them Richardson and Burke were both involved with the "Dig outs". All 3 have benefitted financially, Collins appears to be as compulsive a liar as Ahern.

what;s this other 50,000 on the front page of the irish examiner

http://www.irishexaminer.com/irishexaminer/pages/story.aspx-qqqg=ireland-qqqm=ireland-qqqa=ireland-qqqid=57808-qqqx=1.asp

Pre-augral golf classics in sterling don't ya know

BTW (from SBP, 2002)

"Collins made over €500,000 two years ago from the state's purchase of the Oldbridge estate outside Drogheda. The Flood Tribunal is understood to be examining the deal. It has emerged that the land was bought by the Office of Public Works for €13 million, three years after it had changed hands for only €4.6 million."

thats where the new grange interpretative centre will be...


he didn't know how much was in the account?
ff really know how to pick useless accountants don't they.

lostexpectation wrote:

what;s this other 50,000 on the front page of the irish examiner

Isn’t the standard of what passes for journalism in Ireland just awful.