Businessman Mr Ben Dunne has said that his late father would have "shot" him if he had been alive when he gave £1.3 million to Mr Charles Haughey.
In an RTÉ radio interview, Mr Dunne said: "He would have shot me, absolutely shot me, taking that type of money and giving it...he would have shot me. I hate to think what he would have done."
Mr Dunne's father, also known as Mr Ben Dunne, founded the Dunnes Stores empire. His son described him as a religious man who said the Rosary twice a day and went to Mass every Sunday. He said Mr Dunne snr was anti-alcohol because his own father had a serious drink problem and died in the workhouse in Newry.
Asked yesterday what the reaction of his father would have been to the incident in Florida when Mr Dunne was found high on cocaine with a call-girl, he replied: "He would have been disgusted at the time. He would have wanted to sit down and talk to me. He would have listened to me. He would have advised me to get help.
"When he would see I was doing all that, he would hope for the best, he would pray that things would turn around. He would view it carefully. If he was here today, I think he would be saying 'fair dues, you went down a very bad road. You nearly lost everything, including your life. You have put your life back together'."
In an interview with Olivia O'Leary on the programme Journey Around My Father, Mr Dunne said he had never thought of his father while he was captive after being kidnapped in 1981. "I thought of myself and just hoped to God I could get out of the situation."
When he was released, his father had said: "I didn't realise how much work you were doing in here. Your were gone for six days and every time a decision was to be made, Mr Bernard would make that decision."
Mr Dunne said that since his departure from Dunnes Stores, he had many new interests. "I have a far better relationship with my children, with my wife. I read, I go to art galleries, to the theatre, things I thought I would never do. When I was in Dunnes Stores you were told it was a seven-day week, 24-hour day. "That is what he [my father\] taught us.
He had loved his father's ability to forgive and forget. "But at times he could be a little too tough on people. There were many people who worked in Dunnes Stores, gave their lives to it, and on retirement did not really get a lot out of Dunnes Stores."