Of the three blogs written by political correspondents of Irish papers, Harry McGee’s Inside Politics is my favourite. He gives the sense of going a little deeper than he does in his newspaper pieces, which is surely the whole point of journalist’s blogs. He also writes long and often, making Inside Politics vital reading over the course of the last month or so, when the likes of myself needed a regular fix of campaign news. He wrote something a few weeks ago though that struck me as odd at the time, and which I think is worth revisiting in the light of today’s tribunal news.
On 14th May, discussing Bertie Ahern’s statement regarding his finances, made at the request of Michael McDowell, he says:
“The one thing that he does nail on the head is the alleged dollar lodgment. The Tribunal lawyers said that the £28,772.90 that Celia Larkin lodged (this was the £30,000 sterling that he says Michael Wall gave him for renovation and for stamp duty) represented the exact sum he would have received that day if he tendered $45,000.
But in his statement yesterday, he said it actually equated to $44,277.68 at the appropriate AIB rate. Either he’s wrong or the Tribunal is wrong. And if the Tribunal is wrong, it’s a fundamental error, especially as it knew that this allegation would be made public before the hearing began. That one has been knocked on the head.”
It seemed to me that Bertie’s statement had singularly failed to knock the foreign exchange issue on the head. As Harry pointed out, either Bertie is wrong or the tribunal is wrong. Could it have been all that hard to find out which? Until we knew for sure that Bertie was right, surely there remained questions to be asked of him? Why Harry, having identified this issue, did not pursue it is his own business. But I would have hoped that somebody could have chased it up. In the end, even Michael McDowell, who only days before was horrified by the issue, decided to let it lie.
And now here we are a few days after the election and tribunal counsel are still absolutely certain that the relevant sum lodged into Ahern’s account equated to $40,000 and not £30,000stg. This is not a matter of arcane knowledge. The rates of exchange of Sterling and Dollars to the Irish pound on that day are a matter of record. A mere few seconds of googling found me this, and while I’m sure records regarding the old Punt are harder to come by, they have to be out there somewhere. Doing the sum is not the most difficult mathematical exercise in the world either. Why was this issue left to die by the press, only to be revisited today? What if it turns out that the Tribunal counsel are right and Bertie was wrong? This, a failure to engage in very basic fact-checking of statements made by a major public figure seeking re-election, must surely amount to a significant abdication of responsibility by the press. To respond that people were fed up of Bertiegate, and that all the negative attention was actually helping him is to miss the point. It may well be that to have pursued the matter would have pushed the Fianna Fail vote even higher. So be it. Burying stories in order to damage a politician is just as bad as burying them in order to protect him. The facts of the story remain resolutely unchased as of today. Perhaps an enterprising reader with a little financial know-how might wish to have a go at it.
8 Comments
To paraphrase the late great Frankie Howard… “google ye not”.
The Central Bank of Ireland, while lacking money per se (and not being the type of bank that like to say ‘Yes’ or give you a loan you can’t afford) does have a very bland and inoffensive website that is loaded to the gills with interesting factoids for perusal.
On this day in 1979 the Irish Punt was worth USD1.9585 Seek here for illumination.
Exchange rates from 1979 to 1998 are closing mid-market indications for the Irish pound, expressed as units of currency per Irish pound.
There is no such thing as the exchange rate on the day. Not only does the rate fluctuate by the second, but the rate given in any particular bank branch will not equate to “the rate” on the traders’ screens at the instant that the transaction is done. Every bank has a buying rate and a selling rate, which will not necessarily be adjusted regularly in line with market movements. The margin between selling and buying rates can be quite wide. For the amounts in question here, the margins should not have been that wide, but – I know it never happens – maybe, just maybe, the bank used the “wrong” rate. It wasn’t AIB, was it ?
You are running on Winter time still, I see. That prompts the thought that maybe that’s why the exchange rates don’t match. Or perhaps the bank was still using the Gregorian calendar.
Having examined the rates I note that the punt was trading rather high against sterling at the time, making any disparity a little less dramatic than I’d imagined. Still, if it’s the banks own rates as you suggest Fergus, the question is surely one that can be fairly quickly verified (although my understanding is that, yes, it was AIB, so perhaps not!)
I’d never even noticed the winter time thing. I’ll have a monkey around in the word press settings and see if I can fix it.
Of course, when I referred to the Gregorian calendar, I meant the Julian. But you knew that.
The tribunal was pretty specific on this, that it was the price that aib would have bought for, on that day, including (I think) the discretionary commission. If you ring up the treasury desk in AIB, I am pretty sure they will give you this figure, and probably off th top of their heads. (It’s not as if currency traders don’t read the newspapers. I’m sure they’ve been laughing about this for weeks down there.)
It might also be worth enquiring if Mr Ahern (or Celia) received a rebate from AIB for foreign exchange overcharging. I seem to recall a bit of a hoo-ha when it transpired that (in the distant past) individual branches were being ‘flexible’ with the rates and commissions charged because they were measured on branch profitability.
[…] wrote about this on Tuppenceworth in Bureau de Change […]