A man who claims he was libelled in a newspaper article which referred to him as a "drug king" agreed before the High Court yesterday he had associated with people who were later convicted of major drug dealing.
However, Martin McDonagh (45) denied he was a drug dealer and also denied a suggestion that he had told gardaí his brother Michael was the "Mr Big" in an importation of drugs in the west of Ireland.
Asked about hundreds of thousands of pounds which went through his bank account in the 1990s, he said the money was from his work as a rubbish collector in England and was not the proceeds of crime.
He said a €100,000 settlement which he made with the Criminal Assets Bureau (Cab) in 2004 was for unpaid taxes and for claiming the dole while he was working.
The court was told Cab had alleged, when it pursued Mr McDonagh for that money, that he was involved in "substantial" drug trafficking and in a dole fraud in England.
Mr McDonagh agreed he had not paid tax for several years but said he had since sorted out his tax affairs.
Asked if he was a tax cheat, he said: "If I was a tax cheat, I was, I didn't realise it at the time, we never paid tax."
Mr McDonagh, Cranmore Drive, Sligo, is suing the Sunday Worldover an article published on September 5th, 1999, which referred to him as a Traveller "drug king".
The article alleged he was involved in moneylending and had masterminded the importation of the largest amount ever of cannabis and ecstasy into the west of Ireland in 1999.
The newspaper denies libel and pleads the words complained of are true in substance and fact.
The court has heard Mr McDonagh, a settled Traveller, was arrested with a number of other people following a seizure of £500,000 worth of cannabis and ecstasy in Tubercurry, Sligo, in September 1999.
He said the only reason he was arrested was because he had been on a drinking session with three people who were involved in drugs.
Cross-examined yesterday by Hugh Mohan SC, for the Sunday World, Mr McDonagh said he was friends, but not close friends, with two of those persons, Calvin Carty and Graham O'Grady.
Both were later convicted of possessing a half-million pounds worth of drugs.
A third man, Jimmy McMurrough, who the court heard is also a convicted drug dealer, also turned up for the drinking session, which started in Dublin airport with "12 or 13 pints" of beer.
The session ended abruptly at Stansted airport because, Mr McDonagh said, he did not like Mr McMurrough and had beaten him up once because he had offered ecstasy to Mr McDonagh's daughter.
Mr McDonagh said he knew nothing, and did not want to know, about what Mr McMurrough or the other two men did.
Mr McDonagh said gardaí had "made up" the suggestion that he had made claims, following his arrest for the Tubercurry seizure, about the involvement of Mr Carty and his brother Michael McDonagh in importing the drugs.
He denied he had told gardaí he was involved in a scam in England where he got people to sign on the dole using fake birth certs and took half their payments from them.
It was put to Mr McDonagh that Cab estimated £741,000 went through one of his three bank accounts between 1992 and 2001 and that Mr McDonagh's own accountant estimated the same figure at £419,000.
He said he had never seen a lump sum in either of those figures but, if that was the estimate, it was money from his successful rubbish collection business and buying and selling vehicles.
Mr McDonagh's daughter, Natalia Lyons, told the court her parents were very affected by the Sunday World article and her father did not wish to go out.
The trial continues before Mr Justice Eamon De Valera and a jury.