The Fianna Fail TD Mr Denis Foley is expected to appear before the Moriarty tribunal soon to give evidence about the company he ran with a property developer, Mr John Byrne.
The tribunal has been conducting inquiries into offshore dealings linked to Central Tourist Holdings Ltd, which owned the Central Hotel in Ballybunion, Co Kerry, in the 1970s and 1980s and organised dances there.
The directors of the company, which was dissolved last year, were Mr Foley, Mr Byrne, and a Tralee hotelier and businessman, Mr Thomas Clifford. The nature of the dealings being investigated is not clear.
The Moriarty tribunal's charge is to investigate payments to politicians from the Ansbacher deposits. A source said yesterday the dealings being investigated could only be categorised as such if the terms were given a "rather wide" interpretation.
Central Tourist Holdings Ltd was set up in 1972 with secretarial services from Secretarial Trust Services, the company of the Haughey Boland accountancy firm.
The original directors were Mr Byrne, Mr Thomas Clifford, Mr William Clifford and Mr Foley. Mr William Clifford died in 1981. Up to 1978 there were only two issued shares, held by employees of Haughey Boland. In 1978 two more shares were issued and the four shareholders became Mr Byrne, Mr Foley, Mr Thomas Clifford and Mr William Clifford.
Following Mr Clifford's death his share was held by his executors, Mr Paul Carty and Mr Jack Stakelum. In 1989 the share was transferred to Barreiras Securities, a company with an address at the then Deloitte Haskins Sells Haughey Boland offices, in Mespil Road, Dublin. Also in 1989 Mr Byrne's share was transferred to one of his companies, Ballsbridge Estates Ltd.
Central Tourist Holdings last filed annual returns in 1989. It is understood the Central Hotel was sold by the company in 1986, knocked down and apartments built on the site, and the company has had few if any dealings between then and last year.
At one stage the company took out a loan from Guinness & Mahon bank, though the files in the Companies Office do not record any charge over the company's assets granted to the bank.
A spokesman for Mr Foley said he would be making no comment. Mr Foley was first elected for Kerry North in 1981 and was a member of the six-man Public Accounts Committee sub-committee which undertook the DIRT inquiry.
Efforts to contact Mr Clifford were unsuccessful. He runs a cash-and-carry business in Tralee and is a director along with Mr Byrne of the company which owns the Brandon Hotel in Tralee. He is a former director of Gold Leaf Tea Ltd, now dissolved.
The Moriarty tribunal resumes public hearings tomorrow. It last sat in public on December 21st. It is hearing evidence about the Ansbacher deposits operation.
