FIANNA FAIL yesterday accused the Minister for Justice, Mrs Owen, of attempting to influence a Garda investigation into alleged planning abuses in Dublin.
"It's absolute nonsense, Mrs Owen told The Irish Times. "At this stage I don't even know what stage the investigation is at".
A report in a Sunday newspaper that three Fianna Fail TDs had been questioned by gardai was inspired by Mrs Owen, a Fianna Fail spokesman said.
"It's the last act of a desperate Minister," the spokesman added.
The investigation began in after a firm of Newry solicitors offered a £10,000 reward for information on land rezoning.
"This is Fine Gael dirty tricks," the Fianna Fail spokesman said, "and the Minister interfering with the work of the Garda".
A spokesman for the Garda said it had no current knowledge of the state of the investigation.
Mrs Owen said she had checked with her press office in the Department of Justice and it had received no recent inquiries in relation to the investigation. Mrs Owen said she believed the last time she dealt with the issue was in 1995.
John Maher adds: The third Garda investigation in eight years into corruption in the planning process appears stalled by the fear or refusal of "witnesses" to make formal statements of complaint.
The investigation, prompted by information handed to the Garda by a firm of Newry solicitors, is headed by a superintendent based at the Garda's National Bureau of Criminal Investigation.
However, senior Garda sources are wary of the value of some of the information offered and are also questioning why reports purporting to detail the progress of the investigation should now emerge in public.
The solicitors advertised in The Irish Times on behalf of unnamed clients in July 1995, offering a reward of £10,000 to whomever could supply information leading to the conviction or indictment on land rezoning corruption.
Later the firm said 55 people had come forward to offer information, some alleging substantial payments to political figures. Many of the complaints proved trivial or irrelevant, but seven cases were compiled in a dossier forwarded to the Garda in December 1995.
Senior Garda sources said they remained concerned about one particular "witness" offering information but refusing to sign a formal complaint. They said the lack of a formal complaint inhibits any investigation.
The "witness" is understood to be in dispute over money with a business against which he has made allegations, and gardai believe he may think pressure from the force will encourage the businessman to hand over the money he believes he is owed.
"It's one of these cases where he's saying, `I'm not making a statement but I will make one later'," a Garda source said. "But we will not be used by anybody."
During a Garda investigation in 1989 a builder signed a statement declaring he had come under pressure to pay £15,000 to a planning official. The official was subsequently tried and acquitted.
In 1993 the then Minister for the Environment, Mr Michael Smith, requested another Garda investigation into allegations in The Irish Times that landowners and developers had paid county councillors who voted in favour of controversial land schemes.