Ms Adrienne McGlinchey said she was arrested after she went to a premises to ask painters from Northern Ireland to remove scaffolding from her house in preparation for a visit from President Mary Robinson.
"I was in the wrong place at the wrong time that morning," Ms McGlinchey said. The arrest happened on July 7th, 1991.
She said she had worked in the family restaurant Steers in Letterkenny. Ms Yvonne Devine also worked at the restaurant. They employed a lot of people from Northern Ireland.
Gardaí often came into the restaurant. It was the only late-night restaurant in the town.
Gardaí were very interested in a man from across the Border who delivered vegetables. She called him the Mushroom Man.
He wanted to rent the flat behind the premises for friends of his, and the next thing she knew the flat was under surveillance.
Her mother "raced them out" of the flat when she came back from holidays.
The night before she was arrested, her mother wanted to be woken up early so Ms McGlinchey said she stayed up all night.
Her sister had run the presidential campaign for Mrs Robinson in Co Donegal. She and her sister had visited Arás An Uachtaráin.
Around that time, the President was going to Donegal to open something, and it was arranged she would come to them for lunch at their house.
"We got the gardens done and the place painted," she said.
She was contacted by security staff, who asked her to take the scaffolding down at the house as the President would be visiting two weeks later.
That morning after she woke her mother, she drove to the painter's house but there was nobody there.
She was with Ms Devine in the car. There was a checkpoint and they were both arrested.
"I think the house I'd gone up to was under surveillance," she said.
They were brought to the Garda station but she did not know the reason.
"They asked who I had told the layout of Arás an Uachtaráin to, and I thought something had happened to the President," she said.
Later that day, she left the station with her mother and they fell out.
She left with Ms Devine and went on "an almighty tear". It was the first time she had a drink.
They went to live in a tent on the sea-front and she then took cheques from the family business but was not prosecuted.