Lowry and former senator pay tax settlements totalling €3.4m

Independent TD Michael Lowry and former Fianna Fáil senator Eddie Bohan paid tax settlements totalling €3

Independent TD Michael Lowry and former Fianna Fáil senator Eddie Bohan paid tax settlements totalling €3.48 million, according to the quarterly tax defaulters' list published yesterday.

Mr Lowry and Mr Bohan appeared on the list of 136 settlements totalling €31.76 million made to the Revenue Commissioners in the three months to June 30th.

Mr Lowry, a Tipperary North TD, and his refrigeration services company, Garuda, made separate settlements totalling €1.45 million, bringing to a close the former Fine Gael minister's dealings with Revenue over payments he received from businessman Ben Dunne.

The payments were investigated by the McCracken and Moriarty tribunals into payments to politicians.

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"This has been rambling on for 11 years," Mr Lowry told The Irish Times. "I am relieved and delighted that this chapter is closed. It has been a very stressful and expensive period."

Mr Bohan, a senator for 20 years until he retired from politics this year, made a settlement of €2 million arising from Revenue's investigation into offshore assets.

An auctioneer with strong ties to the licensed trade, Mr Bohan said the settlement arose from a lodgement dating back 20 years which he could not trace in his records.

He said he had been "wheeling and dealing in a lot of property" and "could not find the records of the stuff I sold". Revenue subsequently treated the money as income.

"I decided to pay it; to wash my hands of it. Banks won't go back more than seven or eight years with their records. The Revenue can go back to birth."

A construction company and a hotel business - in both of which husband and wife Patrick and Margaret Kerrigan, from Cortown, Kells, Co Meath are directors - made two settlements totalling €3.9 million. Calls to Mr Kerrigan's home, office and hotel looking for comment were not returned.

The Comptroller and Auditor General said yesterday the final yield from Revenue's investigation into offshore assets was likely to be near €1 billion. The yield from undisclosed funds in life assurance products will be €500 million.

The comptroller's annual report said 3,872 audits in a special examination of the construction sector last year yielded €116 million.