A PERSON must have a very lavish lifestyle for his legal representatives to make a comment such as that made by Mr Eoin McGonigal SC yesterday on behalf of Mr Charles Haughey.
Mr Haughey is to furnish documents which will show he "accepts as a matter of probability that Pounds 1.3 million was paid into accounts managed on his behalf" but that he was not aware that this money had come from Mr Ben Dunne.
The tribunal has heard Mr Haughey had funds in an "off-shore" account held in the Guinness Mahon bank in Dublin which the late Mr Des Traynor managed for him. The Pounds 1.3 million was paid into this account.
"Substantial sums of money on a regular basis" were paid out of the account to an accountant in Haughey Boland and Co, who used the funds to pay Mr Haughey's living expenses.
There was no mention of whether other sums were paid into this account for Mr Haughey's benefit, or whether the tribunal was aware of any other sources of funds for Mr Haughey.
There has been much speculation over the years about the source of the wealth of Mr Haughey and the extent of that wealth. Almost as common as the stories about the lavishness of his lifestyle have been rumours that he was in debt.
The evidence which the tribunal has heard to date supports both strands of gossip. The Pounds 1.3 million which Mr Dunne gave for Mr Haughey's benefit originated from an appeal organised by Mr Traynor, who apparently contacted a number of the State's leading business people and told them Mr Haughey needed about Pounds 700,000 to "clear his debts".
Estimates of the cost of Mr Haughey's lifestyle vary from Pounds 250,000 a year to as much as Pounds 500,000. If these figures are broadly correct, the Pounds 1.3 million Mr Haughey probably received from Mr Ben Dunne would not have been sufficient to support him for the period concerned, 1987- 1991.
He lives in a 200-year-old mansion, Abbeville, in Kinsealy, Co Dublin. He keeps horses and the extensive wooded grounds contain a lake.
His red-bricked wine cellar is said to boast some of the wine world's most prestigious labels: a Chateau Margaux 1956, a Mouton Rothschild 1967 and a Chateau Laffite 1920.
He is the owner of a Pounds 200,000 50-foot ketch, the Celtic Mist. Inishvickillane, Mr Haughey's Co Kerry island, is accessible only by helicopter in the calmest weather. He bought the island in 1974, reportedly for about Pounds 25,000, at a time when a TD's salary was Pounds 5,000.
The squat, single-storey holiday home he had built on the island would cost about Pounds 250,000 in today's terms. Most of the building materials had to be hoisted across a nine-mile wide stretch of the Atlantic by leased helicopters.
The dining room is believed to contain beams fashioned from beech trees felled by storms in Abbeville. The table can sit 12 comfortably and the host's bedroom is said to contain a healthy stock of expensive clarets.
A mound of rocks in the centre of the island has been christened "Hangover Hill" by the Haughey family.
Mr Haughey founded the accountancy firm of Haughey Boland in 1951. However, in 1961, according to a later interview in Tile Irish Times, he left the practice and any business interests he held on his appointment as Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Justice.
According to Rose Doorly, author of Abbeville, Mr Haughey paid Pounds 120,000 for the Kinsealy house in 1969 and a few years later sold off a field for more than the original price of the entire estate - "effectively acquiring Abbeville for nothing".
Before that the Haugheys had lived in Grangemore, a Victorian mansion on 45 acres near Raheny. This was sold to the Gallagher Group for Pounds 204,000 after the land had been rezoned.
The amount received from the sale was substantial at the time. It became a matter of controversy when the late Mr Gerard Sweetman claimed that Mr Haughey had managed to avoid the payment of income tax and surtax on the sale as a direct result of provisions Mr Haughey himself had introduced a year before under the Finance (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act, 1968.
Asked at a press conference in 1979 to give details of the source of his wealth, Mr Haughey replied: "Ask my bank manager.
