Blaring from the music shop on the ground floor of the apartment building is The Old Washerwoman. If you close your eyes it could be Carroll's on Westmoreland Street. But this is Prague on a cold Sunday morning.
The apartment building in the Holesovice neighbourhood is run-down in a post-communist, chic way. Inside a smell of boiled potatoes in the hall
matches nicely the Irish music from the shop next door.
Two floors above the shop is Ms Miroslava Nezvalova's apartment. She has lived here for 22 years, except in 1993 when she moved in with her sick mother and sublet it for two years to Mr Conor McElliot, a business associate of Mr Liam Lawlor TD.
From here Mr McElliot ran The Irish Consortium, a property consultancy a third owned by Mr Lawlor. Ms Nezvalova has business cards that read: The Irish Consortium - Liam A. Lawlor MP, and giving Mr Lawlor's home telephone number in Dublin and Ms Nezvalova's Prague number.
Ms Nezvalova also has a wad of bank stubs of payments to the Czech telephone company. Mr McElliot did not pay the phone bill for five months before he moved out in December 1995, leaving the debt to Ms Nezvalova, as the phone - and the bills - were in her name.
She was horrified when she saw the telephone company's demand for 40,000 Czech koruns, or £903 Irish. "My own phone bills are never more than 200 Kc (£4.50). I noticed the balance was building up each month but I just kept giving the bills to Mr McElliot and he said he would take care of it," she said.
Ms Nezvalova was unable to pay the phone bill at the time and her phone was cut off for three months, leaving her out of immediate contact with her recuperating mother who lives a short distance away.
"Forty thousand koruns is an awful lot of money and I had to use all my savings and ask family and friends for money. There was no Christmas that year," she said.
She did not make contact with Mr Lawlor in Dublin about the phone bills as she does not speak English and says she does not have the money for a translator.
She says Mr McElliot paid all bills through the company and she is sure Mr Lawlor is aware of the outstanding debt. "If Mr Lawlor and his business are serious, he will pay the debt," she told The Irish Times yesterday.
Mr Lawlor said he knew nothing of the debt. Referring to media reports of investment in his company, he said the £900 debt was "not a lot of money".
"Mr McElliot told me he got on well with the owner of the flat, but he was on medication at the time and I am sure it was just an oversight on his part," Mr Lawlor said, and it "would be dealt with".
Ms Nezvalova said her few dealings with Mr McElliot were through a translator in the apartment.
She thought Mr McElliot was Irish and remembered him as a very friendly man of about 65 who suffered from asthma, and when he moved out he had lost about 10 kg in weight. "He gave me all his suits because he said they didn't fit him any more." Mr McElliot often showed her a picture of what she presumes were his family but they never visited him, she said.
She still gets post for Mr McElliot, including Christmas cards. The latest arrived three days ago from a local charity for sick children. It read: "We thank you for your donation."