Pressure from the Opposition parties remained on Ms Beverley Cooper-Flynn last night despite her resignation from the Public Accounts Committee yesterday.
A Government spokesman said the Fianna Fail TD's resignation from the committee was the "appropriate decision in the circumstances".
According to a statement from Fine Gael's deputy finance spokesman, Mr Paul McGrath, the Taoiseach should have asked Ms Cooper-Flynn to resign from the PAC on Friday after the High Court judgment that she had "encouraged and assisted others to evade tax". Mr Ahern said he was waiting to see if she would lodge an appeal and what form that would take. A spokesman for the PDs, when asked the party's opinion of the resignation, replied: "It has been noted that it happened." He declined to elaborate.
The leader of the Labour Party, Mr Ruairi Quinn, said he welcomed the decision. However, it did not dissolve the responsibility of either Mr Ahern or the Tanaiste, Ms Harney, to make their views known on the case. He repeated that Ms Cooper-Flynn should consider her position as a member of the Dail.
Ms Cooper-Flynn is expected to return to the Dail today. She will be asked to meet senior Fianna Fail figures and to explain her intentions in relation to her case. Meanwhile, The Irish Times has learned that Ms Cooper-Flynn's legal case was not taken on a "no-foal-no-fee" basis, but she faces significantly reduced costs from her solicitors, as opposed to no costs. An agreement on fees was reached between the TD and the firm McCann Fitzgerald at the beginning of the action, and at that time it was never contemplated the case would run for seven weeks. Despite the agreed reduction in fees, however, Ms Cooper-Flynn faces related legal costs of well over £100,000. These include around £20,000 for her share of the overnight court transcript, besides a bill of thousands of pounds for a room rented in the Four Courts for the duration of the trial.
During the course of this trial over 10,000 documents were generated, and the cost of photocopying alone would run to a considerable figure. It is expected that Ms Cooper-Flynn's legal team will argue in the High Court next Tuesday that they won their case in relation to the Meath farmer, Mr James Howard, and he should pay their costs.
The expectation is that RTE will argue it won against Ms Cooper-Flynn in relation to the other investors. RTE indemnified Mr Howard at the beginning of the case.
Those factors taken together, Ms Cooper-Flynn's legal team is expected to argue, should mean that each side pay its own costs and this would amount to a 5050 split, with half relating to Mr Howard and the other half to the other investors. The outcome of that decision on costs could play a significant part in whether or not Ms Cooper-Flynn will lodge an appeal. She had a number of conversations with the Government chief whip, Mr Seamus Brennan, at the weekend and informed him of her decision to resign from the PAC.
In a brief statement issued through the Fianna Fail press office yesterday morning Ms Cooper-Flynn said, following her High Court decision, she believed it was "appropriate to tender my resignation at this time from the Public Accounts Committee". She informed the outgoing chairman of the committee, Mr Jim Mitchell, of her decision.