"If I'm annoyed about anything, it's that I'll be an old man and I'll still be dealing with them [the tribunal].

It's a long time, " the Fianna Fail leader said yesterday.

Clearly unhappy at the length of time he has spent at Dublin Castle, Ahern said he had already given evidence for 15 hours. "I was asked to go in for two half days which was four hours." he said. The Taoiseach is due back at Dublin Castle on Monday afternoon with several other appearances likely in the coming months.

Ahern again returned to his separation as the explanation for the unorthodox nature of his personal finances in 1993 and 1994 in an interview with Marian Finnucane on RTE Radio 1 yesterday.

He said he would not have been dealing in cash or have had the need to take money from other people if he had not been concluding a legal separation from his wife in the mid-1990s. "All other years there was nothing strange [about my finances], " he said.

Ahern also said anyone who had experienced a breakdown in their marriage would understand his position. "People who are separating have to do different things at different times to survive, and I did the same, " he said.

This theme was echoed by Fianna Fail junior minister Conor Lenihan who said the businessmen who gave Ahern money "were to be praised for helping the Taoiseach at a difficult period in his life". In a separate radio interview, Lenihan said there were "plausible explanations for what was going on".

He said the media cared more about Ahern's finances than the general public.

During his Dublin Castle appearance last week, Ahern faced repeated questioning from tribunal lawyers about his level of disclosure of information. Judge Mary Faherty also accused him of giving "polar opposite" accounts of why he withdrew IR�50,000 from his AIB branch in Dublin's O'Connell Street in January 1995.

Despite these interventions, the Taoiseach yesterday predicted he would have no difficulty with the tribunal over his level of cooperation. "I think the judge made it clear that he was not putting blame on me about compliance, " he said. Ahern said the original allegations from Tom Gilmartin had been made in Easter 2000 but that the tribunal only first contacted him in October 2004.

He described the atmosphere at the tribunal as a "great fanfare" with 100 journalists reporting on his evidence. "But that's how it goes if you're Taoiseach, " Ahern said in the radio interview, recorded while he was in Paris on government business this weekend.

He again denied receiving money from the Cork-based businessman Owen O'Callaghan. The developer Tom Gilmartin has alleged that O'Callaghan told him he had given money to Ahern.

O'Callaghan has denied giving money to Ahern. "Somebody might ask me if I got money from Mr O'Callaghan, " Ahern said in another sign of his annoyance with the tribunal's strategy of pursuing him about various transactions in his accounts in the 1990s.