Fine Gael and Labour are to mount a joint challenge to Taoiseach Bertie Ahern today in search of extra information about the payments he received from business people in the early 1990s.
Last night party officials on both sides consulted each other to share out the questions in a bid to ensure that the limited time made available by the Government is properly used.
However, Fine Gael said today's debate may not be the end of the controversy. "We will have to sit down afterwards and analyse the answers given and see where we go from there," a spokesman said.
The Opposition will centre on the taxation and ethical issues raised by Mr Ahern's acceptance of two payments of nearly IR£40,000 from friends in 1993 and 1994, and a third of Stg£8,000 from Manchester-based businessmen in 1994.
However, they are also expected to focus on Mr Ahern's statement that he saved IR£50,000 between 1986 and 1993 even though he did not have a personal bank account during the period.
Meanwhile, Tánaiste and Progressive Democrats leader Michael McDowell has rejected Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny's call on the PDs to put questions to Mr Ahern.
Ridiculing the suggestion, Mr McDowell said: "If we did that we would be accused of asking soft questions and of taking free shots in the penalty box," he told the Association of European Journalists yesterday.
Speaking in Mullingar last night, Labour leader Pat Rabbitte said the current crisis illustrated why the country needed a new government to replace Fianna Fáil and the Progressive Democrats.
"The Progressive Democrats sold themselves to the Irish public as the moral watchdogs of government conduct. Tested in the heat of last week's controversy, they have collapsed and lost their purpose.
"Mr McDowell now may as well sign up at Mount Street [Fianna Fáil's headquarters] because his party is left without any political raison d'etre," he told a party meeting.
"Mr McDowell's capitulation came before the extraordinary revelation that, contrary to the story spun by the Taoiseach and virtually every Fianna Fáil Minister that the money raised in 1993 was a whiparound among personal friends, the biggest donation by far came in the form of a cheque drawn on an account of one of the biggest stockbrokers in the country.
"This raises further serious questions as to the reliability of the accounts given by the Taoiseach to date, and in any other circumstances would have set the alarm bells ringing in the Progressive Democrats, but there has not been a peep out of Mr McDowell on this issue.
"It appears also now that there is an attempt being made to entangle the Manchester monies, which the Taoiseach said were different and separate, with the Drumcondra monies raised to allow him to discharge personal debts, but the PDs don't appear to want to know about this either."
He said voters now faced "a clear choice" between "more of the Fianna Fáil style of government propped up by a submissive PDs or a Labour-Fine Gael alternative that will strive to honestly provide workable solutions to the problems facing our people".
