Cheques should not be pre-signed under normal proper accounting procedure, a former Fianna Fail financial executive told the tribunal.
Mr Sean Fleming TD, who took over the administration of the party leader's allowance after Mr Haughey left office, said it "defeats the whole purpose of having two signatories to an account" if one person signed cheques in advance without knowing what the cheques were for.
The current party leader, Mr Ahern, had earlier told the tribunal he would frequently pre-sign cheques to be drawn on the allowance account when Mr Haughey was leader. These would later be completed by Mr Haughey and his private secretary.
Mr Fleming said that after he reformed the administration of the account, no politician was asked to pre-sign a cheque. He only became aware of the practice when Mr Haughey's private secretary, Ms Eileen Foy, handed him the chequebook which was in use at the time of Mr Haughey's leadership. He found Mr Ahern's signature on three or four blank cheques.
Mr Fleming took over the administration of the party leader's allowance shortly after Mr Albert Reynolds became leader of Fianna Fail in November 1992. He had earlier proposed to Mr Reynolds that the allowance should be administered from Fianna Fail head office, and Mr Reynolds had approved his proposal.
Mr Fleming opened a new bank account for the allowance in Bank of Ireland, Baggot Street, Dublin, to make a clear break from the administration of the allowance during Mr Haughey's leadership. The new account was in the name of Mr Reynolds, Mr Ahern and Mr Padraig Flynn.
Instead of having signatories pre-sign cheques, Mr Fleming would type up a list of payments and submit it to the signatories along with fully filled-out cheques. When senior politicians were not available, party headquarters would issue cheques from the head office account instead. Books, records and accounts were kept "to a proper standard" and were separately audited.
Mr Fleming said he was not surprised that he only received what counsel for the tribunal, Mr Jerry Healy SC, described as "a very small quantity of records" from the previous allowance administrator, Ms Foy.
He told Mr Healy: "I only asked her for the documentation that would be necessary for me to operate the account from there on in. I would have been very interested in getting a lot more, but I didn't get any more . . . I had sufficient to start my job from there on in and I wasn't seeking to go back." He said that for the benefit of the tribunal he conducted "a thorough search of every location of Fianna Fail headquarters" in an effort to locate the relevant records from Mr Haughey's period of office, but no trace of those records was found.
Asked about the use of the allowance during Mr Haughey's term, Mr Fleming said it was very strange that £75,000 of the allowance in 1986, some 40 per cent of the total for the year, was withdrawn in round figures.
Mr Fleming was asked about an entry in the books of Celtic Helicopters in September 1991 for £5,750, which was thought to relate to Fianna Fail business. He said Fianna Fail head office never got an invoice from the company for that amount.
At the conclusion of Mr Fleming's evidence, Mr Justice Moriarty said the tribunal would not sit today.
