A retired Co Meath farmer has claimed that he was introduced to the controversial CMI investment scheme run by National Irish Bank by ail TD, Ms Beverly Cooper-Flynn, now a Fianna Fail TD.
Mr James Howard, speaking yesterday on RTE, said he was "100 per cent sure" he had met Ms Cooper-Flynn about the scheme in May 1993.
Ms Cooper-Flynn had challenged RTE to name the man who claimed she had brought him into the scheme. She said that if he was Mr Howard, who had been identified in a Sunday newspaper, then she had never met him or had any dealings with him and his story was "a tissue of lies".
Mr Howard told RTE reporter Charlie Bird that Ms Cooper-Flynn had telephoned him and said she could invest some of his money in a trust. She assured him that no one would ever find out about it and that "everything would be all right".
After some time Mr Howard felt "very sorry and very angry about it" and he telephoned her and told her he was not happy about it and wanted to take the money back. Ms Cooper-Flynn had replied: "Why give the government 15 per cent?" and Mr Howard had told her that the money was safe that way and that he would not invest it in a trust.
Mr Howard said he had met Ms Cooper-Flynn in 1993 at the Balbriggan branch of the National Irish Bank, where he had been a customer since 1987.
His daughter, Marina, said that about 1990 Ms Cooper-Flynn had called to their home and she had had a brief conversation about Ms Flynn's recent engagement.
Ms Howard had been unemployed at the time and she had remarked on how successful Ms Cooper-Flynn had been in the bank, securing a senior position at a very young age.
"I remembered my father remarking that that was Padraig Flynn's daughter, and I was positive. I actually saw a little card that she had left and I remember looking at it," she said.
Asked how sure she was that it was Ms Cooper-Flynn she had met, she replied: "I'm 100 per cent sure".
Mr Howard said he was positive he had spoken with Ms Cooper-Flynn because she had told him she was from Castlebar and that her father was in politics.
He wanted to show people he was not telling lies and that what he was saying was "the genuine truth".