A SPEECH by former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, delivered in Co Donegal on his final day in office, has come back to haunt him, after the Mahon report published today found he lied to them.
Ahern failed to tell the truth about money paid into his bank accounts in the early 1990s, according to the final report of the Mahon tribunal.
The 15-year investigation is a damning indictment of Mr Ahern’s 15 days of evidence about a complicated money trail.
However it it stops short of making a finding of corruption against Mr Ahern.
The 3,270-page final report of the Planning and Payments Tribunal has been published online this morning. You can read it here: http://media.tcm.ie/media/documents/m/mahonreport.pdf.
In April 2008 on his last day as Taoiseach, Mr Ahern spoke at a charity event at the Clanree Hotel in Letterkenny
Going off his prepared speech, at the end he told an audience of 600 people that he had “always told the truth” and if he had made “mistakes” they were “mistakes.”
One guest who was there on the night said: “I remember that line very well and there was a lot of sympathy for Mr Ahern on the evening. Today that speech lies in tatters.”
Today the Mahon report said it didn’t believed 15 days of evidence he gave to them.
The inquiry found the former Taoiseach failed to truthfully account for tens of thousands of pounds which passed through his accounts.
“Much of the explanation provided by Mr Ahern as to the source of the substantial funds identified and inquired into in the course of the Tribunal’s public hearings was deemed by the Tribunal to have been untrue,” the report concluded.
“Those findings of fact which are adverse to Mr Ahern and on occasion others clearly demonstrated that important aspects of Mr Ahern’s evidence was rejected by the tribunal.”
Mr Ahern failed to explain the true source of lodgements of IR£22,500 in December 1993 and £10,000 pounds sterling in June 1995 to his bank account, according to the report.
Tribunal head Judge Alan Mahon has rejected Mr Ahern’s evidence that he was saving sterling to put towards the purchase of an investment property in Manchester.
Corruption allegations were also levied at politicians from both Fine Gael and Fianna Fail with Judge Mahon concluding that corruption was rife “at every level of the political system.”
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