A £30,000 claim for defamation by the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, against a Cork businessman, Mr Denis O'Brien, will be ruled on in the Dublin Circuit Court today.
The case arose out of newspaper reports last year that Mr O'Brien, of Bally haroon House, Glanmire, Cork, had told the Flood tribunal he had given a £50,000 payment to a politician in the car-park of the Burlington Hotel, Dublin, in September, 1989, in relation to a land rezoning project. The politician was subsequently identified as Mr Ahern. In his statement of claim, Mr Ahern said he had suffered hatred, ridicule and contempt as a result of the false and malicious claim that he had secretly and improperly accepted a bribe and a corrupt inducement.
Counsel for Mr O'Brien argued that Mr Ahern had defamed himself because, up to the time he spoke publicly about the matter he had not been named in any newspaper reports.
Judge John F Buckley will rule whether the case should go ahead.