The EU Commissioner, Mr Pad raig Flynn, pleaded with Mr Tom Gilmartin to say he gave the former minister for the environment a £50,000 cheque for his own personal campaign, the property developer claimed yesterday.
Mr Gilmartin said he refused to meet Mr Flynn after a report appeared in a newspaper about a minister receiving £50,000.
"He got very, very upset. I mean really upset. He indicated to me that I was only about to destroy him," Mr Gilmartin alleged on RTE's This Week in an interview with RTE's Special Correspondent, Charlie Bird, in Luton.
Asked about giving evidence at the Flood tribunal and if he would see it through, he replied: "Oh, yes, I'll see it through, yes, I'll say nothing that I can't prove."
Mr Gilmartin has claimed he made a donation of £50,000 in June 1989 to Mr Flynn when he was minister for the environment.
The property developer commented on Mr Flynn's Late Late Show appearance.
"Well, after I considered the implication of what he said, I considered it a scurrilous statement because it seemed to indicate to me that he was giving the impression on public television that I was not fully compos mentis and therefore I was incensed." he said. It was a lie that both he and his wife were not well.
Asked about a series of contacts he had with Mr Flynn at the end of September and the beginning of October, Mr Gilmartin said that after the Sunday Independent published a report about a minister receiving £50,000, he received a call from Mr Flynn.
"He asked me about these reports that were in the paper, did I hear them, did I see them. He made some comments about Jody Corcoran, the writer, and then he went on to say that it seemed that the powers that be in Dublin were doing their damnedest to shovel the muck on him and the ex-members of the Dail."
Mr Gilmartin continued: "He was quite upset and he was pleading with me. He was pointing out to me the damage that this revelation was going to do to him, and that he never did anything to me and, in fairness I have got to say, that as far as I was concerned Mr Flynn wasn't the worst of them."
Mr Flynn rang him again and asked him what decision he had come to, what he could do and what he had told the tribunal. Mr Gilmartin told Mr Flynn he had told the tribunal he did give the contribution to the party, and Mr Flynn used an expletive.
"He then suggested, `Well, there's no harm if you gave a political donation. They can't do anything about it for my own thing, for my own benefit, and if I say that I gave it to him for his own campaign, political campaign, that I was a decent fellow, I did nothing wrong'.
"The speculation in the media at the moment is that I was buying favours or that I paid this to buy favours, which is totally untrue," Mr Gilmartin said. He always said that if a site needed designation, it was not worth building on. Consequently he did not ask for a favour, which Mr Flynn said to him, that there was no favour asked for or gained. "I told him that I had decided to give a donation and he says `Great'."
When asked if it was a donation to Fianna Fail, he replied: "Yes, I wrote out the cheque. I didn't know who the payee was or who Fianna Fail used, if they had a trust or whatever, so I asked him who I made it payable to and he says `Leave it, leave it on the desk there and it'll be all right'."
He said he did not make it payable to cash, but left the payee blank. "As I understand it, the tribunal has been trying to trace or has traced a number of cheques and they have got the cheque and it was cashed in a bank in College Green," Mr Gilmartin claimed.
In the second conversation he had with Mr Flynn, the suggestion was made that he gave the £50,000 to him for his personal campaign.
"I said I couldn't possibly do that now because I had told the tribunal that I had given the donation to the party.
"I said perhaps I could withdraw that statement but I had sworn an affidavit, so consequently, if again I had to swear, I would have to swear a lie. I couldn't do that but I said I would see what I could do," he alleged.
"He was pleading with me to say that I gave it to him for his own personal campaign."
Asked what Mr Flynn said when he eventually told him he would not meet him, Mr Gilmartin said: "He got very, very upset. I mean really upset. He indicated to me that I was only about to destroy him. I was going to cost him £750,000 for a start and that the people in Dublin, well . . ."
Mr Bird asked if Mr Flynn used expletives.
"I won't say on . . . No, that in Dublin the powers that be were going to shovel it all on him, this would definitely destroy him and did I not consider that? In my opinion he was trying to enlighten me on what I should say, his version of events, and what I should say to the tribunal if I hadn't already given the information."
Asked if he was saying he handed a cheque to Mr Flynn for £50,000 in 1989 in the Department of the Environment when he was minister, Mr Gilmartin said: "I did, yes, I did, well, it's a statement of fact and I hope that I'm not getting myself into any problem with the tribunal. They have the cheque."
Mr Gilmartin was asked what his attitude was about going before the tribunal, as he had been considering whether he would co-operate because of a story that Mr Haughey's tax bill was reduced from £2 million to nil.
Mr Gilmartin said it would be an exaggeration to say that Mr Haughey's tax affairs had to do with his decision to pull out of the tribunal. On reflection, he decided after Mr Flynn's phone calls and harassment from the press, and when he heard of the result of the decision by the tax commissioner to write off Mr Haughey's bill, that it was an opportunity.
"I came to the conclusion that between the McCracken tribunal, the Flood tribunal, all the other tribunals, Moriarty tribunal, they were going nowhere, they were going around in circles.
"I also felt that Flynn was not the worst of them. His peers are more street-wise. They appoint tribunals, they hide behind tribunals when they're asked a question and they try to undermine the tribunals with their spin-doctors and their cohorts," Mr Gilmartin said.