Mary Harney has denied claims that she cancelled an internal investigation into tax evasion, just because it had raised allegations against one of her party colleagues.
The former Progressive Democrats leader says she's happy with how she handled the internal investigation – and denied allegations made in the Dáil yesterday.
Yesterday, under Dáil privilege, Mary Lou McDonald alleged that Mary Harney only called a halt to an internal inquiry on possible tax evasion, when it had found evidence against her party's founder Des O'Malley.
Yesterday Des O'Malley denied having an offshore account at Ansbacher Bank, and now Mary Harney herself has also denied the allegations.
In a statement last night she said that “at no point” were her actions influenced by any of the names being encountered by the civil servant running the investigation.
Mary Harney says the Department's inquiry was only ever designed to get the ball rolling before a full investigation by the appropriate authorities.
She also says she defended the length of that inquiry – which had been running for seven years before she shut it down and asked for the evidence to be passed on.
She even says she gave the civil servant more time than he had asked for to finish the inquiry – and only ordered him to end it, two months after he was due to have done so himself.
