Terry Keane issued a statement yesterday aimed at countering "certain gross inaccuracies" regarding the money she was getting from The Sunday Times and attacking the conduct of her former employers, Independent Newspapers.

In the statement, issued "on her behalf in her absence" by solicitors Sheehan & Company, Ms Keane said she was being paid a total of £65,000 for the three Sun- day Times instalments of the story of her affair with Charles Haughey and a further £50,000 a year for two years to write a column for the newspaper.

"I was previously paid £41,000 per annum by the Sunday Independent," she said.

The statement went on to describe as totally false last week's claims in The Sunday Independent - repeated on RTE by its deputy editor, Anne Harris, citing sources in News International, owners of the Sunday Times - that the Times was paying her £600,000. The figure was described by Ms Keane as preposterous.

"I am shocked that my former employer could print this statement in the first instance and further failed to correct it in later editions . . . I highlight this instance as the worst of many falsehoods printed both about me and also my relationship with Mr Haughey," said Ms Keane.

"I did not write my book or appear on the Late Late Show for financial motives," Ms Keane asserted in the statement. "If that was the case, I would have published my story at a much earlier time when Mr Haughey was Taoiseach or indeed offered it to more than one publisher."

Because of the impending publication of the Kevin O'Connor book Sweetie, Ms Keane said she felt she had "no choice other than to allow the true version of my relationship with Mr Haughey into the public domain".