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Two questions…

On Friday’s Late Late show, Eamon Dunphy repeatedly pointed to an article by Gene Kerrigan in the Sunday Independent of March 23 . (It was, incidentally, a very good article).

1. Why can I not find this article on the Independent’s website?
2. Why did Eoghan Harris replace Gene Kerrigan on the back page of the Sindo today?

Answers in the comments section please.

For those interested, here is a copy of the article. Dunphy was right to reference it several times.

State needs courage to seek conviction

Update: Apparently Kerrigan was at a conference. It would have been nice of the Sindo to tell us that.

The Beresford deal

Ah. It is refreshing to see someone joining the dots.

I’ll cut to the chase here. The IT hints at something I have been digging up for the last couple of weeks, thanks mostly to some archived posts on Politics.ie.

You see, I only found out recently that Michael Wall withdrew £50,000 in cash from an account in Galway, some time after he sold the house to Ahern.

Why is this important? Suspected money laundering, using a house to do it. Of course no one is alleging that Ahern was involved in money laundering – but when you read this report it is exactly what springs to mind.

The Beresford Avenue house was purchased in March 1995. Wall is a native of Co Mayo now based in Manchester. He is a long-time supporter of Ahern’s who got to know Ahern during his visits to Manchester. Celia Larkin helped Wall identify the Drumcondra house, which the tribunal has been told was to be rented by Ahern, but to be available to Wall during his visits to Dublin.

Ahern’s solicitor, the late Gerry Brennan, acted for Wall when Wall purchased the house for £138,000. Wall took out a mortgage of £96,600. When stamp duty is included, Wall’s contribution to the house purchase comes to approximately £50,000, a sum that arises at both ends of the house purchase story.

In January 1995, Ahern withdrew £50,000 from his accounts in AIB O’Connell Street. He has said he used the money to buy £30,000 in sterling cash and that he kept it and the remaining Irish currency in his safe in St Luke’s. Over time he gave the money to Larkin, who was working on refurbishing the house Wall had purchased, Ahern has said.

No records have been found that show Ahern purchased £30,000 sterling in early 1995 and he did not mention the transaction until he was first asked about sterling lodgements by the tribunal during a private interview in 2007. Ahern cannot say where the sterling was purchased. If Ahern did not purchase the sterling, then the question arises as to the source of £30,000 sterling that was lodged by Larkin and Ahern to accounts in 1995.

In 1997, after the sudden death of Brennan, Ahern purchased the house from Wall for £180,000, which constituted a loss for Wall after costs. The men engaged separate solicitors for the transaction. The tribunal is expected to hear evidence later this year to the effect that Wall’s solicitor lodged the net proceeds of the house sale to an account of Wall’s in Galway on November 5th, 1997. A month later the sum of £50,000 was withdrawn from the account by Wall in cash. Wall has not been able to produce any records showing where the money went thereafter.

Evidence on these matters has yet to be heard, but nothing said to date has indicated that this sum turned up in Ahern’s accounts after it left Wall’s account. Ahern has said he has disclosed all his accounts to the tribunal.

The tribunal has discovered that Wall made a will during the period when he was the owner of the house in which he left the house to Ahern or, in the event of his demise prior to that of Wall, to Ahern’s two daughters. Ahern expressed amazement when told of this fact by the tribunal in private interview. Brennan acted for Wall when Wall made the will. If Wall had died, his life assurance would have paid the mortgage, and Ahern would have been left an unencumbered house.

Better late than never…?

It may be over a week late, but it seems that the media is waking up to the Ahern story. The Easter holidays may have caught everyone on the hop, perhaps. Last week I was literally stunned by the lack of reaction to Carruth’s evidence. Not a whisper from RTE. Not much from the Irish Times. Radio shows were muted.

A number of things have now changed.

First, the Late Late Show last night. The audience supported Eamon Dunphy, and he was the only one criticising Ahern. Not only did the audience support him, they cheered him. And they literally laughed at Eoghan Harris, who made an absolute fool of himself. Waters just didn’t make a coherent point.

Second, the Irish Times leads with some figures, and inside it looks further into the Tribunal, more so than it has done in a very long time. The Irish Examiner also has a two-page spread on the figures, though includes only money tied directly to Ahern’s accounts, or monies traced directly to him (totalling 250k, not 450k). Unlike the Irish Times, it does not include constituency monies or the B/T account. This is really a matter of discretion for the paper.

The Irish Times also looks at:

Questions over significant sums
Complicated cash deals surround Beresford
More tax queries following tribunal evidence
Collins unclear as to who owns building

The Evening Herald plan to run a story on the Resign, Mr Ahern Facebook group, of which I am founder (though the group is owned by its members).

Ahern will face questions in the Dail next Wednesday. I believe we are reaching a tipping point.

I expect no less than his resignation. If not, then the clock is ticking.

[Disclosure: I work for the Irish Examiner]

Aerial photos of Cork and other Irish places

Via Tom comes news that Cork has made it onto earth.live.com bird’s eye view photos. It’s very impressive.

Given certain buildings on the map, and the stage at which they are built, the photos are very recent.

It’s only appropriate that Cork is on there before Dublin. But don’t worry jackeens, Dublin will be on it soon.

Here, for example, is my place of work:

picture-4.png

For the geeks: Yes that’s Firefox 3 Beta 4 I’m running. Yes my Delicious plugin works fine, after disabling Firefox’s security settings. Jim Fallows helped out with that.


Have fun looking at more of Cork over at Live Maps
.

Fitna the Movie: Geert Wilders' film about the Quran

Explicit warning:

This video contains some VERY graphic images and audio, please do not watch it unless you are prepared to see and hear them.

BBC news story here.

Personally, I found the film extremely upsetting. If you would rather not experience that upset, do not watch it.

I do see merit in the argument that the film incorrectly equates all of Islam with violence. In many ways it has the propaganda elements and tone of the same Islamic videos it criticises. Western classical music is used as background, instead of arabic chanting. The most extreme Islamists are used to portray Islam as evil, in the same way Islamic videos portray the West as evil.

One could hold up an extreme version of anything and hold it up as representative, but it is not.

All this video does is encourage the polarisation of views, instead of the compromising of views.

Religion is a curious thing.


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