An emotional Bertie Ahern this evening admitted receiving payments totaling IR£39,000 Irish punts (€50,000) from friends during his tenure as minister for finance in the early 1990s.
The Taoiseach, Mr Ahern speaking to RTE News this evening.
He described the payments - made in December 1993 and in 1994 - as "a debt of honour" which he fully intended to discharge.
But Mr Ahern admitted that no repayments had yet been made and no interest had been paid.
In his first major statement on the controversy surrounding the payments, the Taoiseach said the loans were made to cover the cost of his legal separation from his estranged wife Miriam Kelly and to provide for their children's education.
He was adamant that the monies in no way compromised his position at Cabinet. "My advice is that I broke absolutely no code, ethically, tax, legal or otherwise," he said.
The first payment amounting to £22,500 was made by a group of eight of Mr Ahern's associates in December 1993.
He named them as Paddy Reilly, Des Richardson, Padraic O'Connor, Jim Nugent, David McKenna, Fintan Gunne, Mick Collins and Charlie Chawke.
The second payment totaling £16,500 was made in 1994 by Joe Burke, Dermot Carew, Barry English and Paddy Reilly (whom Mr Ahern said was a different Paddy Reilly to individual mentioned in relation to the £22,500 payment).
Mr Ahern
In an interview with RTE's Six One News, Mr Ahern said: "When they gave me that £22,500 I said I would take this as a debt of honour that I would repay it in full, that I would pay the interest on it, I know the tax law, I am an accountant and that I would pay that back in full on another date when I could.
"I haven't paid the money because they refused to take it, I think they will now because they see the difficulty but I offered a number of times to repay it," he said..
The controversy surrounding the payments was precipitated by a report in last Thursday's Irish Timeswhich said the Mahon Tribunal was investigating payments of between €50,000 to €100,000 to Mr Ahern in 1993.
In the face of persistent Opposition calls to clarify details of the payments, Mr Ahern was today forced into making a statement on the matter.
Mr Ahern said: "The difference of talking about somebody taking millions and somebody taking hundreds of thousands in exchange for contracts and other matters and taking what is relatively small contributions from friends who had a clear understanding they were paid back — I do not equate those."
The money, he said, was raised by "close friends, people who have been close to me for most of my life. They are not political friends. They are personal friends. They are long standing friends."
When it was put to to him that some of these people were in business and in a position to potentially benefit from decisions he made, Mr Ahern said: "All I can say on that is they didn't and never did they ask me".
"I might have appointed somebody but I appointed them because they were friends, not because of anything they had given me," he added.
Asked if he thought the episode has damaged him politically, Mr Ahern responded that the leaking of the information to The Irish Timeswas done to damage him.
"I suppose those people who set out in a calculated way to do that, whoever they were, probably have succeeded to some extent."
Mr Ahern also mentioned £8,000 he received for addressing businessmen about the Irish economy.
