Former taoiseach Albert Reynolds has strongly criticised his successor, Bertie Ahern, for accepting money from friends and businessmen when Mr Ahern was minister for finance in the early 1990s.
Mr Reynolds said yesterday he was "shocked" at the revelations last September that Mr Ahern took money because it was something that he, as taoiseach of the day, should have been aware of, but was not.
Mr Ahern served as minister for finance in the government led by Mr Reynolds from 1992 to 1994 and succeeded Mr Reynolds as leader of Fianna Fáil that year. It emerged last September that Mr Ahern had accepted €50,000 in 1993 and 1994 from friends and a payment of £8,000 from a group of 25 businessmen in Manchester after addressing a meeting there.
Asked yesterday what he would have said to Mr Ahern if he had come to him when he was taoiseach and said there were people offering him money, Mr Reynolds replied that he would have told him: "No chance".
He added: "There are ways of getting money. Go to the bank and borrow it. If you are minister for finance you can pull in the money besides taking it off other people."
In an interview with Marian Finucane on RTÉ Radio 1, Mr Reynolds said: "I always strongly believed there was no way any member of a government should finance anything he was doing in that manner.
"Now I know the circumstances there with his marriage breaking up, but you still don't take anything that is bad for politics and bad for everything."
He said he did not think it was good "in the long-term".
Asked if he would have advised Mr Ahern not to take the money, Mr Reynolds said: "Absolutely. No question. I was minister for finance and no-one ever offered me money. There is no way you do this".
Later yesterday, Mr Reynolds told The Irish Times he had not discussed the matter with Mr Ahern since last September as he had not met him and he "rarely" went into the Dáil nowadays.
Mr Reynolds said he would have had an obligation as taoiseach in 1994 to have told Mr Ahern, if he had come to him, that he could not accept the money. "That is my recollection of the ministerial code of the time."
Asked if he felt Mr Ahern should have resigned after last year's revelations, Mr Reynolds said: "That is not for me to answer. I am out of politics now and I will keep views to myself."
Asked if he would have sacked Mr Ahern from his cabinet if he had learned that he had taken the money while he was a minister, Mr Reynolds said: "I am not going to get involved in answering that".
Mr Ahern confirmed in a television interview, following newspaper reports last September, that he had received payments in 1993 and 1994.
He said the money was given to him as a private citizen, not in his then role as minister for finance.
He said he regarded the money as a loan, but said no repayments had been made and no interest had been paid. He also said he had attempted to repay it, but that his friends would not accept repayment. Mr Ahern repaid the money after the revelations last year.
Mr Ahern, who was in Riyadh yesterday at the beginning of a week-long official visit to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, was not available for comment.
A Fianna Fáil spokeswoman said he had "dealt comphrensively with all those issues".
Meanwhile, Mr Reynolds said he was shocked at what came out about another former taoiseach, Charles Haughey, in the Moriarty tribunal report.
He said there had been rumours around for a long time.