That’s Ireland

I’ve just noticed a very clever question from Tribunal barrister Des O’Neill, which exposes yet another plot hole in Bertie Ahern’s fairytale of Drumcondra. This one involves Tim ‘Nice-but-Dim’ Collins, the serial account opener who claims that figures are not his forte, contradicting a key element of Ahern’s sworn evidence. I’m sure this exchange will feature in the Tribunal’s final report. >>>

Ahern’s Evidence

You may recall that Ahern and Collins claim that the ‘B/T’ account means ‘Building Trust’ account, as opposed to the ‘Bertie and Tim’ slush fund account, even though (a) ‘Digout Des’ Richardson and Tim Collins had another account in the same branch called ‘D/T’, which they accept was ‘Des and Tim’, and (b) the bank manager says that he always assumed that ‘B/T’ meant ‘Bertie and Tim’.

Well, a key part of Ahern’s evidence about this was to claim that the reason that the account was called ‘B/T’ was that all of Fianna Fail’s accounts are named by initials (as an aside, even that isn’t true, but leave it go for a moment) and Ahern went on to give examples including ‘PP’ for ‘Parliamentary Party’ and ‘CDC’ for ‘Comhairle Dail Ceantar.’

Collins’ Evidence

Now fast forward to Tim Collins’ evidence, not about this account but about another account – one called the ‘Tim Collins Fianna Fail election account, current account’, which ran parallel to the official Fianna Fail Dublin Central election account in 1992.

(As another aside, when Ahern’s side sent a copy of this account to the Tribunal, the name ‘Tim Collins’ was deleted from the name of the account in the statements, but the Tribunal got copies of the proper statements from the bank.)

The Exchange

Des O’Neill asked Tim Nice-but-Dim who he was accountable to for the money in this account, and Tim said he was accountable to the people who are running the election in St Lukes.

Mr O’Neill asked if he meant the representatives of the Dublin CDC at the time.

Tim asked what CDC meant, and Mr O’Neill said: ‘Comhairle Dail Ceantar for abbreviation, do you not know that term?’

Tim Nice-but-Dim said ‘I don’t, no’.

Oops.