Mr Derek Nally last night questioned whether Prof Mary McAleese, the Fianna Fail/Progressive Democrat presidential candidate, was a "proper person" to be President of Ireland.
In a toughly-worded statement, issued before his confrontation with Prof McAleese on last night's RTE1 Questions and Answers programme, Mr Nally said that if a Department of Foreign Affairs memo purporting to reflect some of her views on Sinn Fein was accurate, Prof McAleese "works to a different moral agenda than most people in the Republic."
Mr Nally was responding to a weekend newspaper report of the memo. The Irish Times understands the author of the memo was Ms Dymphna Hayes, who at the time was first secretary of the Department's Anglo-Irish section.
She wrote it for the then secretary of the Department, Mr Sean O hUiginn, who was recently appointed Ambassador to the United States. Ms Hayes, who has since taken up a post in New York, based it on two conversations with Prof McAleese - the first last January, the second in May, after the UK general election of May 1st.
Ms Hayes is believed to have used Prof McAleese, pro-vice chancellor of Queen's University, Belfast, as a source for thinking in the nationalist community in Northern Ireland.
At the time the memo was written, the IRA ceasefire had not been restored and Prof McAleese is believed to have been involved in talking to both Mr John Hume and Mr Gerry Adams, along with the Redemptorist priest, Father Alex Reid.
On the €1 Questions and Answers programme last night, Ms McAleese said the "inaccuracy and mischievousness" with which the Department of Foreign Affairs document appeared to have been written concerned her greatly. She also said she had never voted for Sinn Fein and had always opposed violence.
Mr Nally said on the programme that the document had quoted Ms McAleese as saying she was "very pleased with Sinn Fein's performance in the (UK) general election" and confident that it would be able to perform better in the local elections.
He said she was also quoted as saying she was not interested in running for election in the North unless there was a Sinn Fein SDLP pact.
Ms McAleese: "That is untrue."
Mr Nally: "Is the Foreign Affairs official telling lies?"
Asked by the programme's chairman, Mr John Bowman, what would be wrong with such a pact, Mr Nally said it would be very wrong in his view. "We had no peace process in Northern Ireland at the time. There was no ceasefire in Northern Ireland at the time.
"If you did say those things, you haven't grasped the mood of the people down here," he told Ms McAleese. Ms McAleese: "I did not say those things."
Mr Nally said that in his experience officials in the Department of Foreign Affairs, or any other Department, took contemporaneous notes and were "very, very sure" before they passed them on.
He said that if Ms McAleese had not said the things attributed to her, "then you should sue the official in the Department of Foreign Affairs."