ABOUT HALF the personal election costs of the Minister for Agriculture, Mr Yates, in the 1992 general election were paid by Mr Ben Dunne, the Minister has revealed.
The Minister issued a statement last weekend declaring that Mr Dunne had contributed £5,000 to his 1992 campaign. Responding to reporters' questions yesterday, Mr Yates disclosed that his total personal costs in the campaign were "in the order of about £10,000".
He added: "Any other individual donation would have been of a much lesser amount than the amount I received from Mr Dunne". The full amount of donations, including the sum received from Mr Dunne, was not sufficient to cover the total cost.
"Both I and the Government are very determined that all pertinent, relevant information in the Price Waterhouse report would be made available at the earliest possible date. I have no idea whether any of the payments to the Fine Gael party or myself are included in that. I have read media speculation that we're not."
He had not received any other sum from Mr Dunne before or since. "I'm quite happy for everyone to have the type of total disclosure that I put forward in my own statement.
It was the Government's priority to secure the publication of the "relevant extracts" of the report.