Mr Bernard Durkan was taking on the chin the publicity over his personal financial affairs. Eight years ago the ACC wrote off almost £20,000 in interest on loans the Fine Gael TD had with the State-owned bank.

The settlement was negotiated on his behalf by Kildare constituency colleague Mr Charlie McCreevy, who at the time was a Fianna Fail backbencher.

One of six Oireachtas members involved in the DIRT inquiry, Mr Durkan said he had a job to do and there was no question of him standing aside for the investigation. He confirmed that he no longer banked with ACC and said that when his current bank came before the inquiry, "I asked them the same hard questions as the other financial institutions."

The committee began hearing evidence on the August 31st. However, it was only last Thursday afternoon that ACC contacted Mr McCreevy to remind him of the Durkan write-off.

A spokesman for ACC said the company's managing director, Mr Padraic O'Connor, was made aware of the write-off only the previous evening. He said a staff member of ACC watching the proceedings of the PAC "made the association".

The Minister was told last Thursday in his capacity as shareholder in ACC. It's understood that ACC's legal advice was to inform Mr McCreevy about the write-off, which, ironically, he himself had negotiated.

The Minister immediately contacted the chairman of the inquiry, Mr Jim Mitchell, by telephone. This was the first Mr Mitchell heard of Mr Durkan's personal financial dealing with ACC. He said he was "puzzled by the import of the message".

On Thursday evening he met the inquiry's legal team, led by senior counsels Mr Frank Clarke, Ms Mary Irvine and Mr Paul Gilligan.

What the chairman had to say came as no surprise to the legal team which two months earlier had asked each member to provide details of any dealings with the financial institutions under investigation at the DIRT inquiry.

Information was sought on bank accounts, outstanding debts and any shareholdings held in any of the companies involved in the inquiry. It is understood the legal team went as far as to ask about the financial affairs of immediate family members.

However, it was unclear last night whether the members were asked whether they had availed of the 1993 tax amnesty.

None of the six members was aware of what the others had revealed to the inquiry's legal team. They had been advised prior to agreeing to serve on the sub-committee what constituted a conflict of interest and each member had signed a declaration indicating he had no conflict of interest.

Mr Durkan said he told all to the legal team which, a committee source said, "gave the thumbs-up to each member including Bernard Durkan".

The source said "the screening process was designed to circumvent any possibility of this type of eventuality".

Mr Mitchell said yesterday that he saw "no cause to be embarrassed" by the Durkan revelations. He said he was confident his Fine Gael colleague had not been compromised and would continue to serve on the sub-committee.

Ironically, only 24 hours before the ACC chairman, Mr Padraic O'Connor, contacted the Minister for Finance about Mr Durkan's interest write-off, the committee had heard that the State-owned bank owed £17.5 million in DIRT. That figure did not include potential interest and penalties.

ALL IN all, it had been a bad day for the ACC. Mr John Hogan, managing partner with its external auditors Ernst & Young, told the committee the £17.5 million was "a substantial proportion" of the bank's worth in 1992. ACC also came in for criticism from the committee's chairman. An angry Mr Mitchell said he was disappointed at the failure of ACC executives to inform the committee fully about staff members who had bogus non-resident accounts.

Last weekend's Sunday Business Post revealed that Ms Gary Joyce - the former ACC chairwoman who gave evidence to the inquiry last week - had received payment of over £60,000 from ACC between 1998 and 1999 in addition to her annual chairwoman's fee of £6,000.

Ms Joyce, who was highly critical of management practices within ACC during her tenure as chairwoman, acknowledged that there was "an element of non-compliance by ACC Bank with respect to non-resident accounts".

Mr Mitchell said his understanding was that ACC "were not making an issue" of the Durkan write-off. This was confirmed by ACC last night. The bank said that, while it regrets the information came into the public domain, it does not intend to investigate the leak. Mr Mitchell commented yesterday that the media possibly "should be asking questions elsewhere because if there was any wrongdoing it is not in the committee".