Mayo TD Beverley Flynn said she does not believe she has anything to apologise for in relation to the issues that led her to take a failed libel case against RTÉ.
Ms Flynn was speaking after she settled with the broadcaster for a sum believed to be between €1.2 million and €1.3 million, in respect of RTÉ's €2.8 million in legal fees outstanding as a result of the case.
She said the settlement will take her income for the rest of her working life. RTE said this evening it believed it had obtained as much money as it possibly could from Ms Flynn.
The broadcaster had brought bankruptcy proceedings against the TD over her failure to pay any of the legal costs arising from her unsuccessful libel action against the station and journalist Charlie Bird. RTÉ alleged Ms Flynn had failed to pay any of the total bill of €2,848,088 arising from the libel action of 2001.
Beverley Flynn said the settlement will take her income for the rest of her working life
Ms Flynn, then a Fianna Fáil TD but now an independent deputy, lost her 28-day High Court action against the station, Mr Bird and farmer James Howard in relation to claims that she assisted clients of National Irish Bank, for which she had worked, to evade tax. She also failed in her appeal to the Supreme Court against that decision, which was dismissed in 2004.
"I fought a case and I fought it with everything available to me over a 10-year period because I believed in it 100 per cent," Ms Flynn said on RTÉ's News at One.
"Everybody knows my position as a member of the bank...I worked for the bank and I feel to be quite honest with you, maybe over the years, that I have been singled out and in some ways scapegoated for what, in effect, was bank policy. I never believed I did anything wrong. I have always believed that I have worked within the law. I fought that case because I one hundred per cent believe it and that is the position."
Asked whether she was saying she had nothing to apologise for, Ms Flynn said she believed she did not.
"I have fought one hundred per cent for what I believe in. I have put everything I have personally on the line to defend that particular position."
Ms Flynn said she believed she had been "singled out" for attention. When it was put to her that five judges of the Supreme Court had ruled unanimously against her, saying that she had no reputation deserving of legal protection, Ms Flynn said she had gone before the people of Mayo, who were "fully aware" of her position and had been returned to the Dáil on three successive occasions.
On the settlement, Ms Flynn refused to disclose the amount, but she said it was up to RTÉ to reveal it if it wished to do so.
Ms Flynn said she had accepted the "reality of this debt" and that she had always seen it as her responsibility to do everything possible to bring a resolution about.
She was "a bit upset" about what she felt was "misrepresentation" in the media about her constititutional challenge to the law that states a bankrupt person may not sit as a TD.
Mayo TD Beverley Flynn
She felt some people were suggesting she was using the challenge as an opportunity to walk away from the debt and to continue in the Dáil with protection from bankruptcy.
"I would like to clarify that that, in fact, was not what I was about at all. The reason I sought the constitutional challenge was that I would be able to keep a job, protect an income for myself so that I would actually be in a position to pay off the rest of my responsibility, even if that took the rest of my life," she said.
Ms Flynn said the settlement with RTÉ, even though it is less than half the outstanding amount, will "cost me my entire income for the rest of my working life".
"It's a massive amount of money and from my point of view...really what I was trying to do was to do the best deal that I could. At the end of the day I have finite resources. I will be borrowing on an extensive basis to pay this. I am 41 years of age, my entire working life from the day that I was 20 until the day that I retire will be spent on repaying this amount of money."
Ms Flynn also said it had been "rather unfairly" suggested that she might seek the assistance of her parents or her partner to pay the debt.
"I have funded myself entirely as most people do....have always been an extremely independent person. I suppose, the difficulty for me even at this stage on a personal level is that I find myself now where...my entire income for the rest of my life is going to be caught up in paying this.
Peter Feeney, head of public affairs, RTÉ
"That's the reality of the situation and I have had to face up to it. But I don't think that people should be saying that people close to me and around me should have to shell out for a debt that is my responsibility. Despite the fact, might I say, that all of those parties have offered to help out. The reality is that it's my responsibility and I intend to settle this bill on a personal level from my own resources."
"Everybody knows that I'm not a wealthy person."
On the Taoiseach's recent comments suggesting that she might return to the Fianna Fáil party, from which she was expelled following her failed libel action, Ms Flynn said she had found Mr Ahern "extremely fair" in negotiations with her before the formation of a government.
"There was absolutely no bitterness at all between the pair of us."
She was very happy with the outcome and noted his "complimentary comments" that she might return to the party and possibly achieve ministerial office in the lifetime of this Government.
Ms Flynn said she was delighted to have been elected by the people of Mayo three times, on this occasion as an independent TD.
"But I come from a Fianna Fáil background, my political philosophy has always been Fianna Fáil and the reality is, I would love indeed to be back within the Fianna Fáil party."
RTÉ said today it believed it had got as much as it possibly could from Ms Flynn.
Peter Feeney, head of public affairs policy for RTE, said: "We were never going to get all of it and we feel that this is the best possible amount we can achieve. Had it been taken to the point of bankruptcy, there is a real danger that we would have got a lot less and the taxpayer would be much worse off."