INDEPENDENT TD Mick Wallace told listeners of a weekend radio show he had once spoken to a hitman who described how he could threaten a contractor with a gun in order to recoup money owed to him.
However, Mr Wallace said it was never his intention to send the man to the contractor’s door.
In an interview with Marian Finucane on RTÉ Radio 1 on Saturday, Mr Wallace spoke about an incident he had first referred to in a 2005 interview in which he said he had spoken to a “hitman” about recovering a debt of £20,000 owed to him by a contractor.
In Saturday’s interview Mr Wallace said he had gone down the legal route but his solicitor had advised he would be lucky to get £13,000 before legal costs and it would take at least two years.
“I just happened to meet a guy in the pub the next night and he told me about what he did and all and how he made his living… He was a debt collector,” he said.
Mr Wallace said he asked this man: “If I said to you, ‘Go get my money’, how would you do it?”
“Well, he says, I’d just need his name, he says, and the company he works for, and he says I’d find out the rest and I’d go out to his house at 8 or 9 o’clock at night… and I’d put my foot in the door and I’d have a gun on me and I’d give him seven days to pay and generally they pay,” Mr Wallace said, adding that the price the man had quoted was £4,000.
Mr Wallace said he then met a man who had previously worked for him but who now worked for the contractor and told him he was to get his money from the contractor. “ ‘How did you do it?’ I said, well, I hired a hitman and explained how... he was going to get the money.”
Mr Wallace went on to say that, two days later, he received a phone call from the owner of the company who consequently paid Mr Wallace £16,000 of the £20,000 owed to him. “But to be honest, no, I wouldn’t have sent a gunman to his door,” he said.
The 2005 interview with Business and Finance differed in that Mr Wallace said he made contact with the man: “So I knew of a guy made a living out of a gun… I made contact with him and said: ‘Listen, there’s a guy owes me €20,000 – will you get it for me?’”