The Minister for Transport, Mr Brennan, has said he received no money from the chief executive of Ryanair, Mr Michael O'Leary, after the Labour Party leader, Mr Pat Rabbitte, appeared to suggest that he had.
Mr Brennan, who is pressing ahead with the break-up of Aer Rianta, a move favoured by Mr O'Leary, declared yesterday that he had "got nothing" from the Ryanair boss.
Mr Rabbitte's remark was made in the Dáil yesterday after Mr Brennan asked him where he had got a confidential Government memorandum on the subject. Mr Rabbitte said: "Never mind where I got the memo. If the Minister wants to know where I got the memo, I might ask him questions about what he got from Michael O'Leary."
Mr Brennan responded: "I got nothing from Michael O'Leary, I hope Deputy Rabbitte is not claiming that I did."
The Minister for Communications Mr Dermot Ahern, called on Mr Rabbitte to withdraw the remark, adding: "The Deputy might tell us what he got from Frank Dunlop?" This referred to the donation of £2,000 in cash by Mr Dunlop to Mr Rabbitte before the 1992 election, which was subsequently returned.
A spokesman for Mr Rabbitte said later that he was not making "any specific allegation" against Mr Brennan. He did not accept the interpretation that Mr Rabbitte's comments had involved an allegation that money was paid. However, he would not confirm that this was a "mistaken interpretation".
He said Mr Rabbitte had asked a rhetorical question "in the context of a heated exchange". However, he declined to say what, if anything, Mr Rabbitte's rhetorical question had been designed to convey.
Meanwhile, it emerged last night that the Government has scheduled to begin debates on the State Airports Bill in late November, followed quickly by a Dáil debate. The Aer Rianta plan yesterday provoked some of the stormiest Opposition attacks for months upon the Government.
The Minister for Transport, Mr Rabbitte said, had failed to produce a plan justifying the decision to split Dublin, Shannon and Cork airports into stand-alone companies.
"No business case has been made out for the proposed changes and no business plan, not even a screed of paper, has been made available," Mr Rabbitte declared.
Meanwhile, Fine Gael TD, Mr Denis Naughten, urged the Minister to produce a White Paper on the future of Irish aviation before publishing legislation. "There are plenty of cases where proposals with a clear strategic overview ended up rebounding against the interests of the Irish people.
"Any decision concerning the future of our air industry must be given extremely careful consideration to ensure it does not suffer the same fate," the Longford/Roscommon TD declared. Fine Gael, he said, would not support the Aer Rianta legislation, even though it supports it in principle, until the business plan is clearly outlined. "The Minister's efforts are bungling and incompetent," Mr Naughten said.
Meanwhile, SIPTU's National Industrial Secretary, Mr Michael Halpenny, urged Mr Brennan "to take stock and call a halt" to the proposal to break up Aer Rianta.
"Recent revelations in the Dáil, this week and last alone, demonstrate a compelling argument against the break-up and its threat to jobs and regional economies," he said.
"This is a matter of vital national interest involving not only the livelihood of nearly 3,000 workers and their families, but concerning an enormously successful and profitable publicly owned enterprise."
Three reports commissioned by both the Government and Aer Rianta have argued against, or failed to support, any break-up proposal, most recently one by PricewaterhouseCoopers. "Now finally we have the revelation that the proposal is being pushed ahead against the advice of the Department of Finance," said Mr Halpenny.
"It is noteworthy that it is not just trade union members in Aer Rianta who are raising queries about all this - so are all the opposition parties in the Dáil, respected media commentators and business analysts, as well as an increasingly sceptical general public. The Minister for Finance, as the shareholder, has a duty to secure and protect this major State asset from such an unacceptable risk and to do so in the national interest and in the interest of all stakeholders - especially the employees."