Former supermarket boss Mr Ben Dunne has said he still does not know if a ransom was paid for his release after his kidnapping in 1981.
Two attempts by the Dunne family to deliver payments of £500,000 to the kidnap gang, believed to have been members of the Provisional IRA, were foiled by the Garda and RUC.
Speaking on RTE's Open House programme on the 20th anniversary of his abduction yesterday, the former chairman of Dunnes Stores said he did not know if there was a third successful attempt.
Mr Dunne (52), said following his release, after six days in captivity, he asked his father, Mr Ben Dunne snr, and his friend, Mr Noel Fox, who he had suggested to the kidnappers as an intermediary, if they had paid the gang and both denied it.
"That's the way it stands today. I will never know if a ransom was paid. I don't think about it because in everything I have ever done in my life there has always been controversy.
"There are people who believe it was paid and there are people who believe it wasn't. I genuinely don't know." Mr Dunne stopped short of blaming the ordeal for his subsequent troubles in 1992 when he was caught in a Florida hotel room with cocaine and a woman from an escort agency, but said with hindsight, he should have gone for counselling.
"This situation in 1981 was a big trauma for me and I took no counselling and looking back that was not a wise thing to do." He received counselling after the 1992 incident and had "worked very hard to be a normal person and a happy person". "I feel very good and I feel mentally I can handle most situations now," he said.
Mr Dunne, who now runs fitness centres, appeared on the show with long-time friend, Father Dermot McCarthy.