MR MICHAEL Lowry faces further tough questioning about his non-payment of tax on money paid to him by Dunnes Stores, when the Dunnes Payments Tribunal resumes today.
Yesterday, he admitted his tax affairs were "not in order" but he was anxious "to put past mistakes behind me and try to return my life to some sense of normality...
"I fully accept that I have a tax problem. I fully accept that I should have dealt with it in a more timely way."
Mr Lowry told the tribunal that he had treated as personal income payments he received from Dunnes Stores on foot of invoices sent to Dunnes by his company, Streamline Enterprises. He did not give a direct answer to a question, asked six times by counsel for the tribunal, as to whether he had paid tax on this income.
He responded that he had apologised for his tax affairs not being in order, and that he had now employed professional advisers and had made full returns to the Revenue Commissioners. His dealings with them were not yet finalised.
Fine Gael and Labour yesterday withdrew motions calling for the tribunal's terms of reference to be extended after the tribunal chairman, Mr Justice McCracken, read a statement to the tribunal saying he was opposed to the extension of his remit at this stage.
Judge McCracken said that the tribunal had received information and documents on the basis of the present terms of reference, and had told those supplying information that if it turned out not to be relevant to the business of the tribunal, it would not be made public.
"If the terms of reference were now to be broadened and extended so that information previously furnished with the assurance of confidentiality ... would now become relevant to some broader inquiry, then the banks, companies and other persons who furnished such information and documents would, in the tribunal's view, feel rightly and properly aggrieved that the undertaking as to confidentiality which was given to them was being breached and that the tribunal process was in this fashion being abused," he said.
In such circumstances "I and the tribunal legal team believe that it would be ethically improper and perhaps impossible for us to participate in any such extended inquiry."
According to the Fine Gael chief whip, Mr Jim Higgins, his party would not wish to do anything to create "a real risk of jeopardising the work which the tribunal has accomplished to date". However, in a subsequent statement issued on behalf of the party, Fine Gael said: "the Dail and Seanad will have to return to this matter at an early date".
The Labour chief whip, Mr Brendan Howlin, said his party proposed that the tribunal be allowed complete its existing tasks before embarking on an expanded remit.