THE Fianna Fail leader, Mr Bertie Ahern, issued a strong warning at the opening of the party's 62nd ardfheis that there was no place in his organisation for those seeking or receiving large sums of money.
Without naming the former Fianna Fail leader, Mr Charles Haughey, Mr Ahern said "certainly there would be no place in our party today for that kind of past behaviour, no matter how eminent the person involved or the extent of their prior services to the country".
However, in defence of "the person now being openly referred to", he said that he, like the humblest citizen in the land, was entitled to a presumption of innocence. The people should withhold judgment until the Tribunal of Inquiry into the Dunnes Stores payments had heard all sides and completed its work.
It was the Oireachtas, and ultimately the people, who decided what political leaders and representatives were paid and who provided them with the appropriate facilities, he said.
"Even if in the particular instance there were no favours sought or given, we could not condone the practice of senior politicians seeking or receiving, from a single donor, large sums of money or services in kind, be they Fine Gael or Fianna Fail, or the former Workers' Party, now mostly Democratic Left," he said.
In his mind, Mr Ahern added, it was "just as unacceptable to seek a million or half a million pounds from the Soviet Communist Party as it is to seek it from Ben Dunne".
Mr Ahern accused Fine Gael and Labour of having carefully timed, in 1977, 1987 and 1997, "various judicial proceedings to precede a general election in order to be able to fight a negative campaign". They did not have sufficient faith in their own positive political message to the Irish people so they tried to cloud the issue instead.
Turning his guns on the Labour Party a week after the Tanaiste, Mr Spring, rejected the possibility of a future coalition with Fianna Fail, he said he would not be so arrogant, without giving a reason, as to exclude in all circumstances the combination that was most popular with the people in December 1994.
If other leaders and their advisers were too shamefaced about their role in that period to be able to look their former partners in the face again, that was a problem for their parties, not Fianna Fail.
Fianna Fail was seeking re-election as a single party government, but, failing that, the second preference would be to join forces with the Progressive Democrats.
"Failing that, I will not rule out any combination that has worked well in the past or any new one that might work well in the future," he added.
Referring to a suggestion by the Taoiseach, Mr Bruton, that a Fianna Fail/Progressive Democrat alliance would not last "a wet week" Mr Ahern called on him to state it openly "so that the public can see the utter absurdity of it".
"Our opponents need to wake up and realise that in this election they are fighting not the Fianna Fail of any other period but the Fianna Fail of now, under Bertie Ahern," he said.
Meanwhile, describing Fianna Fail as the party of the peace process, Mr Ahern said its task in government would be to recover and rebuild that process. "I hope that, in the North and in Britain, the results of the general election would provide a strong boost for peace and for an inclusive political settlement."
Condemning the IRA bomb attacks in Britain, Mr Ahern said such attacks did not advance the republican cause one iota.