The Fianna Fáil TD for Mayo, Ms Beverley Cooper Flynn, has rejected charges that she helped her father, the former European commissioner, Mr Padraig Flynn, to evade tax, writes Mark Hennessy, Political Correspondent
In a carefully worded Dáil statement, which was still being analysed by the opposition late last night, she said she had behaved properly at all times.
Fianna Fáil's own ethics committee investigation into her conduct will be suspended after a brief initial meeting today, until the Mahon tribunal reports.
Ms Cooper Flynn said her father had asked her to invest IR£25,000 in October 1989 just weeks after she started working for National Irish Bank. Insisting that she did not know if the money had come from a Luton property developer, Mr Tom Gilmartin, she said: "He did not tell me anything else about the source of that sum, nor did I know."
She recommended three investments: the MIM Britannia European Fund, the MIM Britannia Nippon Warrant Fund and Flemings International Eastern Opportunities Fund. "All were legal investments, then and now. These companies, MIM (now Invesco) and Flemings, were licensed and authorised to sell their products in Ireland," she said.
The Central Bank required Irish people who wanted to make foreign investments in 1989 to conform to exchange control regulations, which stayed in place until 1993. "Exchange control forms were duly completed in accordance with the then Central Bank requirements," said Ms Cooper Flynn.
The investments were cashed in March 1993 and December 1994, and the proceeds were paid into a Belgian account held by her parents, who had moved to Brussels when Mr Flynn became commissioner.
Meanwhile, the Fianna Fáil Minister of State, Mr Willie O'Dea, raised the prospect she could lose the party whip next week if she loses her Supreme Court appeal against an RTE libel judgment.
Mr O'Dea said Ms Cooper Flynn had been restored to the party's ranks because she had appealed the High Court judgment to the Supreme Court.
"If she loses the Supreme Court case, it seems to me to follow logically that the same sanction would apply in the aftermath of the High Court case," he told RTE television's Prime Time programme last night.
The Fianna Fáil ethics committee, headed by the chairman of the parliamentary party, Mr Seamus Kirk, will discuss her case this afternoon. Commenting on her performance last night, Mr Kirk said: "Well, she certainly seemed to be very confident about what she was saying."
The ethics committee will convene to arrange for the collection of all published comments and then adjourn, pending the outcome of the Mahon tribunal, he said.
Putting further distance between Fianna Fáil and Mr Flynn, the Taoiseach said he would have assumed that Mr Gilmartin's donation was intended for Fianna Fáil.
"There is no doubt that to get £50,000 in 1989, made out to cash, which did not find its way into the party of the treasurer, is extraordinary. There is no hiding that fact.
"That was a huge contribution which did not go to the party. Obviously the question arises as to what it was for, what was it about. That is a matter for the tribunal to resolve," Mr Ahern declared.
Both Fine Gael and Labour withheld final judgment on Ms Cooper Flynn's statement on the grounds that it needed further examination.
The Taoiseach should have received guarantees from her before she was allowed to rejoin the parliamentary party before the last general election, said a Fine Gael spokesman.