The Fine Gael leader claimed that the Taoiseach's credibility was fatally weakened.
Mr John Bruton said that the assertions made on the Tonight With Vincent Browne programme, on RTE Radio 1, on Tuesday night, and in yesterday's newspapers, were of the utmost gravity for Mr Ahern. "They show that the Taoiseach was wrong on several counts when he told this House last week about the Fitzwilton payment to Mr Burke.
"Firstly, it has now emerged that it was Mr Byrne of Rennicks who told Fianna Fail about the £30,000 payment to Mr Burke and that the £30,000 was not something that Fianna Fail's internal detectives had discovered.
"Secondly, Mr Byrne never said the company gave `no money,' as the Taoiseach tried to tell the Dail last week. "Thirdly, the Taoiseach misled a wider audience when he told the nation at large on television on Friday that he had instructed an official to `make sure the tribunal get everything'."
Mr Bruton said it had now emerged that Fianna Fail did not tell the tribunal everything. They did tell the tribunal that Mr Burke had got £30,000 from Fitzwilton and not just £10,000. "I would like to know if Ministers Martin and Woods, who appeared on the media over the weekend to defend the Government, were ever told that their party had only disclosed £10,000, not £30,000, to the tribunal. I believe the Taoiseach kept them in the dark about the facts, too. But perhaps they can deny that."
The impression, he said, was systematically created by Fianna Fail that "everything" had been given to the tribunal. But now in a change of tack, the Taoiseach's anonymous spokespeople were saying that he was legally advised last March not to disclose the extra £20,000 from Fitzwilton because they had not been asked about it by the planning tribunal. "How could the tribunal ask about what they had not been told about? And if Fianna Fail believed the £20,000 was outside the planning tribunal's legal remit the question has to be asked: who did the Taoiseach think would then investigate the £20,000 Fitzwilton money pocketed by Ray Burke?
"Did the Taoiseach think it was not worthy of investigation at all? Did the Taoiseach think it was acceptable for a serving minister to pocket a donation of that size? If he did not think it acceptable, why did the Taoiseach not initiate an investigation last March?"
Mr Bruton said he could think of no more appropriate date than April 1st - All Fools' Day - for Fianna Fail to send its affidavit to the tribunal, the "April Fools" affidavit.
"The Taoiseach's decision not to tell the tribunal about the £20,000 retained by Ray Burke raises serious questions. What special hold has Ray Burke over the Taoiseach's loyalty?
"He appointed Mr Burke to government last June when dark clouds were already circling over Mr Burke's head. While Minister Dermot Ahern asked a direct question of Mr Murphy in London, the Taoiseach has had to admit he had asked no matching direct question about the JSME donation of Mr Burke himself in Dublin last June. Why was he afraid to ask Mr Burke? Why?"
On the Taoiseach's role, Mr Bruton said: "Like a small boy caught robbing an orchard, the Taoiseach's reaction was a mixture of petrification and denial. Last Wednesday, we saw the petrification in the Taoiseach's wholly inept and unconvincing explanations.
"Next, he treated this House and the people of Ireland to the unedifying spectacle of his rush to the high moral ground. Now that he has been found out, there will come a blustering attempt at self-justification. It is all too late. Too late altogether."
Mr Bruton said that it was never normal for ministers to be handed £43,000 to keep for their own use, in two donations, in their homes during an election campaign. "I do not believe that any of the other ministers appointed by the Taoiseach to his Government have ever had any such experience. What happened was truly exceptional. It was an aberration.
"And it is because it was such an aberration that I do not believe there is any acceptable explanation for the fact that the Taoiseach did nothing last March, when he heard that it was £43,000, not £13,000, that his long-time colleague Ray Burke had kept for his own use, of donations received in his home in 1989."