The former leader of the Progressive Democrats, Mr Des O'Malley, said that when he first asked former Taoiseach Mr Charles Haughey to conduct an inquiry into irregularities in the beef industry he was told to "get stuffed".
In the third instalment of the documentary series on his life Des O'Malley: A Public Life, broadcast on RTE last night, Mr O'Malley said he told Mr Haughey it was clear from the World in Action programme on the Irish beef industry in May 1991 that there were "highly unsatisfactory and improper things going on and that they'd have to be inquired into. He told me to get stuffed."
Speaking about the dilemma of whether to go into coalition with Fianna Fail in 1989, Mr O'Malley said while he had an "abhorrence of a party led by Mr Haughey" he came to the conclusion that the public would not thank the PDs for refusing.
Mr O'Malley also said that Mr Haughey put up no resistance to resigning in 1992 when he went to him concerning new telephone-tapping allegations. "The last straw as far as we were concerned was when [Sean] Doherty revealed what we always suspected, that Haughey was in fact behind the telephone tapping which had gone on in 1982, and I was conscious, of course, that it wasn't just of two journalists. There were others as well, including myself, and I was a member of the government at the time."
He explained that he went to see Mr Haughey to discuss the matter. "I told him that we really couldn't go on now. He didn't put up any great fight, and I didn't have to labour the point or pursue it. I knew he was going to go and he did."
During the programme Mr O'Malley said his three most significant opponents during his political life were Mr Haughey, Mr Albert Reynolds and Mr Larry Goodman. They were formidable opponents, he said, but all needed to be opposed for particular reasons at particular times.
He also revealed that after being expelled from Fianna Fail in 1985 he was approached by Fine Gael and asked if he wanted to join the party but he refused because he felt it would have been substituting one populist party for another.