Who did it come from and why?

Okay, now that we've cleared that up, only two questions remain to be answered.

Who gave Ireland's Prime Minister $45,000 in 1994, and why has he been making up implausible stories about the payment?

When the girlfriend and supersecretary of Bertie Ahern, Celia Larkin (right), dropped into his office at St Lukes in December 1994, at his request, to pick up a suitcase full of cash and take it to the AIB bank and deposit it, where had the money come from?

Who gave Bertie such a massive sum of American currency, in cash, a sum he has consistently blustered and given ever-changing and bizarre explanations for? And more importantly, why?

Let's recall that Bertie, formerly a Finance Minister who didn't have a bank account, the allegedly qualified accountant who signed blank cheques for his mentor, corrupt former Taoiseach Charlie Haughey, initially claimed that this cash was an amount that his landlord Michael Wall had given him in order to refurbish the house he was renting.

Of course, such an amount to refurbish a relatively new home is bizarre to begin with. To have your landlord hand it over to you in foreign currency banknotes is stranger again. Since Bertie was signing so many blank ones for Charlie, you'd think these people might have heard of cheques.

For that landlord to subsequently sell the house to his tenant only a couple of years later, after ploughing £30,000 STG into it, makes virtually no financial sense whatsoever, especially since he sold it to Bertie for only £140,000 punts and had only owned the home for a couple of years, during which it seems Bertie was renting it the whole time.

Remember, this is only ONE of the strange payments Bertie received in cash at that time. Let's not forget the two whiprounds totalling £8,000 punts that he got from businessmen pals in Manchester. Or the debts of honour, totalling £39,000 punts he received but never repaid until this all became public in 2006?

Then there is the £50,000 punts he had apparently saved up between 1987 and 1994, despite having no bank account in that period.

Now that we know that the £30,000 STG house improvement donation from Michael Wall doesn't add up, the question remains, who did give Bertie that money, which appears to be $45,000? Was Bertie receiving large undeclared cash donations from American interests?

And more importantly, why?

Sadly, like the end of season cliffhanger, we've now got to wait for months for the answer. Tune into the Tribunal in the Autumn to find out.

You asked for it

You asked for a Fianna Fail government and it looks like you're going to get one.

Be careful what you wish for. Good luck with dealing with hours of daily commuting, yo-yoing house prices, a derelict health service and hundreds of new stealth taxes.

Hope you enjoy the corruption in government, an 'unexpected' trebling of the cost of the airport metro, more motorways through sites of national heritage and more revelations of a Taoiseach on the make at the tribunals.

The great thing about the democratic process is that people generally get the government they deserve. Whether it will be Fianna Fail + randomers, Fianna Fail + the Greens or Fianna Fail + Labour, it will be a marginally more caring and equitable government than any government with the morally bankrupt Progressive Democrats.

Farewell and good riddance to McDowell and his neo-con cronies. (Picture of McDowell resigning before my eyes last night to follow.)

But whatever government is returned this week will be a Fianna Fail government. I wonder what it says about us that that is all the Irish people deserve.

Getting rid of the evidence

In a totally unforeseen move, the US kangaroo court in Baghdad -

Sorry, let's try that again. The Iraqi High Tribunal has sentenced Saddam Hussein to death. He gets one appeal, then once that's refused (because it will be of course) he will be murdered by the state within 30 days.

I won't be weeping for Saddam, but it does strike me as a little odd when the White House has to issue a statement denying they were scheming for the verdict. Surely that's the biggest confirmation that they were?

Mind you, they probably would like rid of Saddam as quickly as possible. You wouldn't want him going and writing his memoirs in prison implicating all sorts of Western governments in all sorts of arms deals, now would you?