Fianna Fáil Mayo TD, Ms Beverley Flynn, will argue that she is being singled out for unfair punishment at this evening's parliamentary party meeting, which is expected to expel her from its ranks. Mark Brennock, Chief Political Correspondent, reports.
While Ms Flynn's supporters concede privately that she has no chance of surviving tonight's vote, they are lobbying members of the national executive which will meet on Friday to vote on whether to expel her from the party altogether. A two-thirds majority is required for the expulsion motion to succeed.
Ms Flynn is to seek a secret ballot at that meeting in the hope that some members of the 95-person body who are sympathetic to her will vote against expulsion. However, party sources expect her to lose the vote whether it is secret or not.
Ms Flynn's speech this evening to her colleagues in the 116-member parliamentary party will argue that while she lost her appeal against a High Court finding that she had encouraged and assisted others to evade tax, she had been a junior bank official implementing the policy of one of the world's largest banks.
She will say while those who formulated the bank's policy remain unpunished, she is having her political career destroyed for playing a minor role.
Last Friday Ms Flynn received the unanimous backing of the Fianna Fáil organisation in Mayo. Some 350 party activists attending a private meeting of Ms Flynn's county, regional and cumann organisations, and approved a motion calling on the Taoiseach to expel her from neither the parliamentary party nor the party itself.
Ms Flynn's father, former minister and EU commissioner Mr Pádraig Flynn, attended the meeting in Castlebar, and spoke in support of his daughter.
However, national party sources said last night that although a significant number of members of the parliamentary party feel sympathy for Ms Flynn, they believe few if any will vote against the motion.
The 95-member national executive meeting on Friday is unlikely to agree to her request for a secret ballot. Indications are that an open vote would result in an overwhelming majority to expel her. A secret ballot would be expected to also result in an expulsion decision but with a smaller majority.
Ms Flynn said yesterday that Fianna Fáil deputies who were seen to have transgressed in the past had the whip removed from them, but expulsion was unusual.
She told The Irish Times that she had been accepted as a Fianna Fáil member in Mayo and elected as a Fianna Fáil TD there. "The move to remove me without consulting a single local person is completely undemocratic".
The Mayo deputy now prefers to be known as Ms Beverley Flynn. She married Mr John Cooper in 1991, and while she never legally changed her name, she used the name Ms Beverley Cooper-Flynn since her entry into national politics. She separated from her husband in 1997, but continued to use the Cooper- Flynn name, being elected under that name in the 2002 general election. Since last year she has said she now prefers to be known as Ms Beverley Flynn.