State had no role in dinner for prince

TÁNAISTE and Minister for Foreign Affairs Eamon Gilmore has said the dinner organised for Prince Albert of Monaco by Dr Michael Smurfit should have been organised through his department.

Mr Gilmore would not comment on the appropriateness or otherwise of the dinner, where the guests included Tipperary TD Michael Lowry and former Irish Nationwide boss Michael Fingleton. Dr Smurfit is Ireland’s honorary consul in Monaco.

“We had nothing to do with it. It was a private dinner,” Mr Gilmore said. “I think matters like that should be worked through the department.”

He was speaking after attending an event in Dublin, where he said the Irish diplomatic service was working to restore Ireland’s damaged international reputation. A meeting with the ambassadors from Ireland’s 26 EU partners is to be held in Iveagh House on Monday.

The Irish Times understands that Dr Smurfit was appointed Ireland’s honorary consul to Monaco in 1988 at the instigation of the former taoiseach, the late Charles Haughey, and was appointed honorary consul for life. He also became entitled to the use of a diplomatic passport, something sources said was very unusual.

Mr Gilmore said he did not know anything about the circumstances of Dr Smurfit’s appointment or its conditions. Dr Smurfit’s office in Monaco said he was not available for comment.

The Moriarty tribunal’s report on payments to Mr Haughey, said a Smurfit payment of £60,000 from an account in Jersey to an Ansbacher account in London never went to Fianna Fáil.

Dr Smurfit’s evidence was that the payment was for the party and was made following an approach from Mr Haughey in the context of the 1989 general election.

He said the details were handled by the late David Austin, who authorised the payment from an account of Jefferson Smurfit Foundation Trustees Limited with AIB (Channel Islands), to the Ansbacher account, with the late Des Traynor handling matters on Mr Haughey’s side.

The tribunal chairman, Mr Justice Michael Moriarty, said Dr Smurfit was “at the very least, indifferent as to how these funds would be applied and must have known or ought to have apprehended that there was every possibility that the funds would be used for Mr Haughey’s personal benefit”.

Mr Austin also featured in the tribunal’s report on payments to Mr Lowry. The tribunal found a £150,000 payment that went from an offshore account of businessman Denis O’Brien, to Mr Austin in Jersey, and from there to an account of Mr Lowry’s in the Isle of Man, was a payment by Mr O’Brien to Mr Lowry. Both men rejected the finding.

The transfer occurred in 1996 when Mr Lowry was a government minister. He told the tribunal the money was to refurbish a house he had bought for £200,000 in Blackrock, Co Dublin.

A 100 per cent mortgage for the house was approved by Mr Fingleton one day after Mr Lowry approached him about the matter. In 2008, Mr Lowry remortgaged his Tipperary home with Irish Nationwide.