What Haughey said at the tribunal: During the course of his evidence to the Moriarty tribunal, the late Charles Haughey was asked for his view as to the appropriateness of politicians accepting money.
Tribunal counsel John Coughlan SC put it to Mr Haughey: "I think we can take it as a given that it would be inappropriate for a taoiseach to be beholden to anybody financially, would you agree with that?"
Mr Haughey: "Yes."
Mr Coughlan: "I am talking in its broadest context, it would be inappropriate for a taoiseach to be beholden financially to anybody, would you agree?"
Mr Haughey: "Well, it all depends on beholden, the meaning of the word beholden.
"I would think that it would be valid for individuals or institutions to support a political person because they believed in him or her or what they were doing, for absolutely totally disinvolved motives."
Asked if he meant to support the living expenses of a taoiseach, Mr Haughey responded: "No, to alleviate the financial difficulties of a particular politician. I am quite sure in modern history it's happened time and time again. I am thinking of the sort of situation where a group of friends would come together and out of purely altruistic motives, assist a particular politician in a particular spot of difficulty."
Mr Haughey said he did not see any real difference between that sort of support and donations towards the fighting of an election campaign. He said it did not follow that there might be a danger of a politician feeling benignly towards the interests of donors, even subconsciously. "There are many public-spirited people who subscribe to political parties and to individual politicians and who have no anticipation of anything other than the political success of the individual . . . Because they are running a country well, because they are engaging in initiatives which are beneficial to everybody, as I think I continually did."