ALTHOUGH the Buchanan report named only one politician - Mr Michael Lowry - as having received payments from, Dunnes Stores, four other senior Fine Gael members, including the Taoiseach, Mr Bruton, and three members of the Fianna Fail parliamentary party received support.
As a result of inquiries by the Fine Gael parliamentary party chairman, Mr Phil Hogan, it emerged that sums totalling £14,000 had been received by four Fine Gael colleagues for their personal election campaign expenses between 1987 and 1996 from Mr Ben Dunne/Dunnes Stores.
In late 1982 Mr John Bruton received an unsolicited contribution" of £1,000 from Mr Ben Dunne which he says he used to defray the expenses of the Fine Gael campaign in Meath at a time when three elections had taken place in close succession.
The Minister for Health, Mr Noonan, confirmed that, in the course of the 1992 campaign, he received £3,000 from Mr Dunne/Dunnes Stores which he used to cover expenses incurred in the election in Limerick East.
His colleague in Agriculture, Mr Ivan Yates, received £5,900 from Mr Dunne for his election campaign in Wexford. All contributions were accepted by him "on the basis that they are strictly unconditional", Mr Yates said.
It is understood that the Minister for the Marine, Mr Barrett, received about £1,000.
After the Lowry affair, the Fianna Fail leader asked his front bench and the rest of his parliamentary party to inform him if they had got payments from Dunnes Stores. Deputy Sean Haughey received an undisclosed sum over a number of elections while the Meath TD, Mr Colm Hilliard, received just less than £1,000.
Mr Ahern said his party had received no money from Dunnes Stores from 1990 onwards although the party had sought contributions on a number of occasions.
But Mr Dunne made contributions of £100,000 to the Fine Gael party in 1993; £50,000 in 1992; and £30,000 in 1989. Mr Lowry, who was chairman of the party's trustees until last month, was directly involved, along with the Taoiseach, in seeking money from Ben Dunne.
The payments to Fine Gael recorded in the Buchanan report amount to £85,000, £95,000 less than those previously admitted by the leadership.
In the course of the judge's examination of the Price Waterhouse report, Mrs Maureen Haughey, wife of a former Taoiseach, Mr Charles Haughey, was shown to have received a cheque for £20,000 in June 1989. This, she told Judge Buchanan, was an "unsolicited contribution" given to her towards election expenses incurred by her husband in 1989.
Her son, Mr Ciaran Haughey, received a cheque for £19,000, dated October 1988, in relation to his helicopter business.
The Labour Party was paid £15,000 by Dunnes Stores in a contribution to Mrs Robinson's presidential campaign in 1990.