Mr Liam Lawlor has said he looks forward to answering all questions put to him by the Flood tribunal.
Asked yesterday if he was concerned he might meet the same fate as Mr Ray Burke did in the interim Flood report, he replied: "Not in the slightest. I look forward to the opportunity of clarifying everything they want to know, because every decision I made as a public representative is answerable. I have no problem with that.
"But when you are into searching in the Czech Republic, in the name of properties I can hardly pronounce not to mind spell, and all the documentation and detail, you begin to assume that maybe this thing is gone way above and beyond its call of duty. But that is the way it is operating, and I have no problem with that."
Mr Lawlor has been to prison three times for a total of six weeks for not co-operating with the tribunal. He has challenged the tribunal in the High Court and the Supreme Court and faces a legal bill of an estimated €1 million.
On the Flood report which described Mr Burke as being in receipt of corrupt payments, he said: "The thing that staggers me about it is that to conclude on the basis of probability is a very peculiar sort of conclusion. If we are going to be into the probability concerns going forward, there might be a lot of other things which have to be considered under the headline of probability."
In an RTÉ radio interview with Seán O'Rourke, Mr Lawlor said the concept behind the tribunal related to lobbying. "In my political life in Dáil Éireann, I have been lobbied by developers, objectors, senior gardaí wanting to be promoted, barristers wanting to be made judges . . . people in RTÉ looking for promotion . . . State boards." Asked if he thought that had all stopped now, he replied: "No, not at all."
