Wooden beams for building Charles Haughey's island holiday home came from a Limerick tobacco plant owned by Dunnes Stores and demolished in the late 1970s to make way for a store development.

The materials to build Mr Haughey's house on Inishvickillaune, the smallest of the Blasket islands, were flown by helicopter and shipped by local fishermen across the 10 miles separating the island from the Kerry coast.

The house was finished 10 years before Mr Ben Dunne made his first payment to Mr Haughey in 1987 after hearing the former Taoiseach was in financial trouble.

In August 1977, a newspaper report on the lengthy airlift of building materials to the island quoted Mr Haughey saying: "We have the house nearly built. This is the roof we are taking out today." Mr Haughey was then Minister for Health and Social Welfare.

According to a source close to a separate Limerick project, valuable beams in a former tobacco plant were spotted by the late architect and sculptor, Mr Garry Trimble. Mr Trimble was a close friend of Mr Haughey's and worked on the house on Inishvickillaune.

The beams were part of the Spillanes tobacco factory building on Sarsfield Street, which went out of business more than 15 years earlier. Dunnes Stores owned the site and its contractor was demolishing the building.

According to the source, Mr Trimble asked that the beams be salvaged for use in Mr Haughey's island house. The demolition contractor pointed out that any salvage would involve an extra cost as the contract was merely for demolition.

The source said Dunnes Stores paid the extra cost of salvaging the beams, and they were left by the side of the road for collection. The cheque for the salvage costs was issued from head office in Dublin and signed by Margaret Heffernan, according to the source. Mrs Heffernan had been made a director of Dunnes Stores in 1964.

A builder's lorry collected the beams and drove them to the Kerry coast where they were shipped out to the island. Mr Trimble died in a car crash in Dublin in 1979.

Another source involved in the Limerick project, who asked not to be named, said when first asked about the demolition, that nothing had been salvaged. "A contractor who's bidding for a demolition might have allowed a quotation for salvage - I don't know whether this happened in this case - those files have long since disappeared."

When contacted by The Irish Times a number of days later, this source said Dunnes Stores "were not aware where the beams went. They had absolutely no knowledge. I do know that from my records Dunnes wouldn't have ever been aware of it".

The source added that the timber "had already been removed when an architect working for you-know-who saw it. I think he was on his way down to Kerry and the beams had been left on the side of the road".

A spokesman for Dunnes Stores said no record of the transaction could be traced.

In her evidence to the Tribunal of Inquiry (Dunnes Payments), Mrs Heffernan was clear about her feelings about Charles Haughey. She said that the close relationship between her brother, Ben, and Mr Haughey developed some time after their father's death in 1983 and "certainly would not have happened in my father's time", she said. She said her brother would not have discussed the friendship because he knew she would not approve.

"I would not agree with being over-friendly with politicians, and certainly not with Mr Haughey." Asked why, she replied, "I don't want to go into it, but there was something between my father and Mr Haughey."

Last month, the Irish In- dependent reported that the enmity between Ben snr and Mr Haughey dated back to an incident at a trade show in New York in the late 1960s. Mr Haughey, then Minister for Finance, was reported to have thrown Mr Dunne out of the trade show after shouting at him: "What do you think this is? The f***ing Iveagh Market?"