Taoiseach Bertie Ahern has claimed that the publication of details relating to his personal finances was part of an orchestrated political campaign aimed at damaging him and Fianna Fáil.
In the wake of his statement on the financial details surrounding his Drumcondra home, Mr Ahern yesterday was unable to say who or what organisations he believed were behind this campaign.
"There's no doubt about that," he said of his claims of an organised campaign. "It didn't just happen and I certainly don't think it was put together by the media. People were orchestrating this."
Mr Ahern was at Blanchardstown shopping centre, where he said he had not been speaking directly to Tánaiste Michael McDowell, but that he had written to him to respond to an earlier letter from Mr McDowell himself.
The Taoiseach also confirmed that in the last six months he had made a declaration and payment to the Revenue Commissioners on the money he received in the mid-1990s. He denied this was at odds with a statement in the Dáil last October that he had no tax liabilities regarding the £50,000 he got in gifts in 1994.
He expected to get almost all of the payment to the Revenue Commissioners back because he still believed he had no tax liability on any of the money.
Following advice from his accountant, "we decided the to make a full provisional declaration to the Revenue Commissioners and then to set our case out". He declined to say how much the preliminary payment was.
Mr Ahern claimed the leaks had been "orchestrated" over seven or eight months. "I've no evidence, I can't prove it," he said, but he was "tipped off way back last August that these things were being talked out in west Galway in a particular hotel and people were chatting about it".
The Taoiseach also said an unnamed individual had warned him last year about a possible campaign against him.
"I was told very clearly last August that I was going to get all of this stuff. In actual fact, the five things that that person told at the time, all of them happened. I thought the person was zany at the time, quite frankly. But, you know, that's it. I was riding 68 per cent in the polls. The thing was 'get Fianna Fáil, get me'."