DUBLIN, Ireland -- An ebullient performance on national television by one of Ireland's most prominent politicians has embarrassed the 20-month-old coalition government of Prime Minister Bertie Ahern and raised the prospect that the government might collapse.
The official, Padraig Flynn, Ireland's member of the European Commission in Brussels, the executive body of the European Union, is a target of one of two government-established tribunals investigating accusations that members of Ahern's party and other politicians took large sums of money from businessmen in return for official favors.Flynn, joking and lecturing the national television audience, annoyed people and politicians of all parties by refusing to answer directly an accusation that he took the equivalent of $75,000 from a Dublin entrepreneur in 1989, three years before he moved to Brussels.
Ahern has not been accused of taking money improperly or illegally himself, and the gifts were not necessarily illegal when they were made, at least 10 years ago.
But opposition political leaders say that as head of the largest governing party, Fianna Fail, Ahern, a professional accountant, should know about the payments and make his knowledge public.
To stay in power, Ahern needs the four votes held in the 166-member Parliament by members of the Progressive Democrats party. The Progressive Democrats broke away from Ahern's party 14 years ago to combat what they saw as corruption in Fianna Fail.
Flynn, according to the sworn testimony of one witness, accepted about $75,000. The witness, Tom Gilmartin, an entrepreneur, said he passed it to Flynn in 1989 for the Fianna Fail party, but that Flynn kept it for himself. Gilmartin was looking for approval of a development in downtown Dublin. Flynn was then the environment minister.
The complex was never built.
Flynn, in an appearance two weeks ago on a national entertainment show, spoke of how little money he earned ($150,000 after taxes) and how hard it was to maintain his three houses, in Dublin, Brussels and Castelbar, Ireland, on that kind of money.