Former minister for the environment Michael Smith said that although a Dublin councillor told him "money was changing hands" in relation to planning decisions in 1993, he did not report the matter to a Garda investigation which he himself had established.
Mr Smith told the Mahon tribunal he was the unnamed minister, quoted in The Irish Timesin May 1993 in an article on planning corruption, who had asked a Dublin Fianna Fáil councillor if "money was changing hands", and the councillor had replied "I couldn't deny it".
Mr Smith said that at the time, he was "deeply concerned" about planning decisions made in Co Dublin. He had given a number of speeches in which he said planning in Dublin was a "debased currency".
"It was my view that councillors were responding more to the promptings of land-owners, developers and their agents rather than having a vision of how land use and development would take place," he said. "Even the good zonings were all being tarred with the same kind of brush."
He said he had threatened that he would not underwrite the costs of providing infrastructure and facilities for "haphazard or willy-nilly zonings".
"The full capital cost of the provision of services and infrastructure lay with the taxpayer," he said.
Mr Smith said that by making the speeches, he was hoping to rein in councillors and he went as far as he could in meeting his concerns.
In July 1993, following his speeches and a series of articles on planning decisions in The Irish Times, Mr Smith established a Garda inquiry into the matter. He said that over a couple of months he gradually came to the view that matters needed to be investigated.
Gardaí, however, did not ask him if he was the minister who had been told of payments to Dublin councillors and he did not tell them.
Asked by counsel for the tribunal Patricia Dillon SC who the councillor was who had told him of the money changing hands, he said he had thought about it, but could not now "pinpoint it" it in his mind.
In January of the following year, gardaí completed their investigation and indicated that "they couldn't trace any matters of corruption".
Mr Smith said the repercussions of his stance included a meeting in his office, arranged through then taoiseach Albert Reynolds with Dublin county councillors, including Colm McGrath, GV Wright, the late Cyril Gallagher and Betty Coffey.
He said the councillors felt misrepresented and were "aggrieved and extremely angry". Each one in turn addressed him and voiced their concerns, he said.
Ms Dillon asked if Mr Smith had questioned them about whether they had been offered money or had accepted money from developers or on behalf of developers.
"It wasn't the kind of meeting that you could have the interrogation you are suggesting," Mr Smith replied.
