In May 1989 Mark Kavanagh was contacted by his namesake, Paul Kavanagh, and asked to make a contribution of £100,000 to Fianna Fail and the Brian Lenihan fund. Mark Kavanagh was then engaged in the massive enterprise involved in the construction of the International Financial Services Centre (IFSC) at the Custom House Docks site. Paul Kavanagh was fund-raiser for Fianna Fail and was also involved in raising money for Brian Lenihan's liver transplant operation.
Mark Kavanagh asked Paul Kavanagh to come to his office, and he told the Moriarty tribunal yesterday of the details of the conversation that ensued. Mark Kavanagh went on to tell the tribunal in detail of his discussions with his partners in the Customs House Docks Development Company (CHDDC) about the request for £100,000 and of the considerations that led them to agree to make that donation, intending £25,000 of it to be allocated to the Brian Lenihan fund.
He recalled a meeting he had with Alan Dukes (then leader of Fine Gael) and Michael Noonan, both of whom he recalled were "lukewarm about the IFSC", which convinced him of the necessity to support Fianna Fail's campaign to return to government.
He also told of a visit he made to the home of Charles Haughey on the morning of the general election, June 15th, 1989, to discuss how the £100,000 would be disposed of. He was also able to remember that he had to get up especially early to be at Mr Haughey's home in Kinsealy by 9.30 a.m.
However, Mark Kavanagh's memory failed him entirely when asked to recollect who it was that set up the meeting with Mr Haughey and who it was that told him that he should pay the £100,000 by way of one cheque for £25,000 made payable to Fianna Fail and three cheques each for £25,000 made payable to bearer. He agreed the request for this mode of payment was "unprecedented", but he could not recollect who it was that had made this extraordinary request.
The £100,000 contribution by CHDDC to Fianna Fail was entered in the accounts of CHDDC as such - there was no question of that or any part of it being disguised. Mark Kavanagh also told the tribunal: "We did not seek or wish for anonymity."
He said he was perturbed that he had received no acknowledgement or receipt for this very considerable contribution but did not do anything about it until he was approached some seven years later, in 1996, by the former Fianna Fail senator Eoin Ryan, who was seeking a further substantial contribution.
Mark Kavanagh told the tribunal that while he expressed his dismay to Eoin Ryan at the failure to receive a receipt for the £100,000, he did not mention the amount involved. Neither did Eoin Ryan ask him. Subsequently Eoin Ryan told him that the party leader, Bertie Ahern, had been informed. Later on, in May 1996, at a dinner with Bertie Ahern, Mark Kavanagh made a further contribution of £50,000 to Fianna Fail.
At that dinner, Kavanagh said, Bertie Ahern apologised for the failure to acknowledge the 1989 contribution but both of them avoided making any reference to the amount. Neither did Kavanagh say anything about the peculiar manner in which he was asked to make the payment, and Ahern did not mention that there was a record in the Fianna Fail accounts of a contribution of £25,000. And all the while, according to himself, Mark Kavanagh was annoyed at the failure to get a receipt for the £100,000.
Thus, in the course of at least two conversations about the failure to acknowledge the contribution of £100,000, he did not mention the figure and nobody asked him what the amount was. Neither in the course of these conversations about the contribution he had made in June 1989 did he mention to anybody the very peculiar manner in which he had been asked to make the 1989 payment. Apparently, it did not occur to him that there might be a connection between the failure to receipt the payment and the bizarre way in which he was asked to make the payment. Certainly he did not mention this to anybody in Fianna Fail.
It is nearly four years now since it first became known that Charles Haughey was in receipt of very peculiar payments during his period in office. The McCracken tribunal uncovered in 1997 a series of bizarre payments to Haughey from Ben Dunne at the very time that Mark Kavanagh had made the £100,000 payment in June 1989. The Moriarty tribunal was established almost two years ago to make further inquiries into payments to Charles Haughey and during all this time it never occurred to Mark Kavanagh to come forward. He didn't tell the tribunal and, apparently, he didn't tell anybody in Fianna Fail.
Indeed, when the tribunal contacted him on May 29th last about the suggestion that he had been asked to contribute to the Brian Lenihan fund, he managed in his initial response to conceal that the contribution he had made to the fund was part of the £100,000 he contributed in June 1989 - he did tell the tribunal this a few days later.
Mark Kavanagh has a reputation for integrity in his personal and business dealings and it was therefore a surprise that his response to questions at the tribunal yesterday should have evoked an incredulous response for the tribunal counsel who was examining him, Gerry Healy SC.
There is one further oddity. On TV3 last Thursday Ursula Halligan, the station's political correspondent, reported that at the meeting in 1996 between Mark Kavanagh and Eoin Ryan Kavanagh had explicitly mentioned the £100,000 contribution. Having worked with Ursula Halligan in the Sunday Tribune and in Magill, I am confident she did not invent this, that she was reliably informed. Who could have given her this information?