THREE members of the Fianna Fail parliamentary party have informed their leader, Mr Bertie Ahern, that they received personal contributions from Dunnes Stores.
As reports circulated that a senior Fianna Fail figure was mentioned in the Price Waterhouse report, Mr Ahern gave his TDs, senators and MEPs until 6 p.m. yesterday to state if they were in receipt of funding of any sort from Dunnes Stores.
However, Mr Ahern last night declined to identify the three, but insisted the amounts of money received were not large and were donated exclusively in the context of election campaigning.
One of the people is understood to have received no money, though he may be named in the Price Waterhouse report. The second person got "a totally insignificant" amount of money towards his election campaign and the third was given financial contributions over three elections.
Mr Ahern said the recipient of the largest contribution had a good record of monies paid by Dunnes. It was "legitimate and spent on elections", he added.
Senior Fianna Fail figures were last night still trying to contact a small number of parliamentary party members who were abroad and unaware of the leader's request.
"In the last four days, we have done everything we can to check with our people. We wanted to see if there was any involvement with the Price Waterhouse report. It is assumed that the three are named on the report but I am satisfied that the money received was OK", Mr Ahern said.
Following yesterday's meeting of the parliamentary party, the Fianna Fail chief whip, Mr Dermot Ahern, said the leader had asked if his colleagues "were directly or non directly involved" in the payments controversy.
While three members of the parliamentary party had come forward to slay they received "insignificant amounts" from Dunnes Stores, there was no record of a contribution from this source to the party. Mr Ahern had taken over as party treasurer in 1992 and there had been no contribution from Mr Ben Dunne, his sister and chief executive of the company, Mrs Margaret Heffernan or Dunnes Stores, he said.
Officials in party headquarters had gone through records over the past three general elections and found no evidence of contributions from Dunnes in that period.
The chief whip also confirmed he had also asked the Committee on Procedure and Privilege to investigate whether remarks by the Tanaiste, Mr Spring, in the Dail on Tuesday amounted to "unparliamentary language". During the debate on the appointment of Mr Alan Dukes to the Cabinet, Mr Spring described Fianna Fail as "chancers".
Fianna Fail wants the committee to ask Mr Spring to withdraw the remarks.