This statement was issued by the Taoiseach yesterday:
Having exhaustively checked my office diaries, as promised, with the help of the Office of the Minister for Labour Affairs, the Department of Finance and my own records, I have been able to establish that the meeting which I clearly recollected holding with Mr Tom Gilmartin took place in my then constituency office over Fagan's pub on Monday, 10th October 1988. I was accompanied by a local person at that meeting. Arlington, which is the name of one of Mr Gilmartin's companies, is the name recorded in the diary.
I have also established with the help of my former staff in the Department of Labour that there is a record of another meeting in Mespil Road with Mr Gilmartin at 10.45 a.m. on Thursday, 13th October 1988.
According to the records, I also had a meeting a year later with him on Tuesday, 28th September 1989 at 3 p.m. I still have no specific memory of these meetings.
During my time as Minister, I often had more than 20 meetings in a single day in the Department. I have been reminded by the Office of the Minister for Labour Affairs (formerly the Department of Labour) that at that time I was a member of the Ministerial Task Force on Employment and therefore I held numerous meetings with groups and companies in an effort to encourage and stimulate employment creation.
It is most likely that it was in this context that I met with Mr Gilmartin.
As I have pointed out before, I am quite certain that I would not have solicited a donation for Fianna Fail from Mr Gilmartin and I have no recollection of any reference made by him to an alleged £50,000 given to the party treasurer, Mr Padraig Flynn, in June 1989.