Bertie Ahern (Dublin Central, Fianna Fail)

It was not because of anything else. There have been efforts to make them into business people who came together. They were long and trusted friends of mine for many decades.

The issue of savings arose because of completeness. When I was giving the interview I gave the facts. There was no one sum of £50,000, but in my accounts and when I answered all my questions I showed where all my money came from in the period so that I could deny the issues I was being asked to answer, which gets lost in all these issues. They were the issues to show that I did not get £50,000 from Denis "Starry" O'Brien, on behalf of Owen O'Callaghan, that I did not get a bribe from Owen O'Callaghan, that I did not have offshore accounts in the Netherlands, the Antilles, Liechtenstein, Jersey or England with €15 million and that I did not have forged accounts in Mauritius. To the best of my ability for the years requested I showed precisely any lodgements and matched any lodgements to clear my name because these were the issues in which I was asked to co-operate.

Yes, I did save the money and I did not save it in a shoebox. In a capitalist state one might say it was in a shoebox. If it was a socialist state, it would have been offshore or in some company's——

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