The Fianna Fail backbench TD, Ms Beverley Cooper-Flynn, has called on RTE and its investigative reporter, Charlie Bird, to confirm that a man named in the Sunday Independent yesterday is the anonymous person who alleged on air that she had assured investors in offshore bonds schemes that their money would be safe from the Revenue Commissioners.
Recent claims broadcast by the station about her were "a tissue of lies", she said.
However, a spokesman for RTE said last night that the station did not name any of its sources without their consent. The station had repeatedly offered Ms Cooper-Flynn, a former employee of National Irish Bank, an opportunity to respond to the allegations but she had declined. The reports were prepared following extensive investigation by RTE news reporters and were based on a number of sources, he said.
Mr Bird refused to comment on claims about his sources.
Before her election to the Dail in 1997 Ms Cooper-Flynn worked for NIB for seven years. She has confirmed that she was one of a number of employees engaged in selling a wide range of financial products, of which the controversial Clerical Medical International (CMI) product "represented a small percentage".
After the Sunday Independent yesterday named a retired farmer as the man who claimed Ms Cooper-Flynn had brought him into the offshore investment scheme, the Mayo TD denied she had ever met him.
She had never spoken to the man and "never had any dealings or correspondence with him in any capacity whatsoever".
"On June 19th last RTE broadcast a report by Charlie Bird which made extremely damaging allegations about me, both personally and professionally. My family and I were deeply hurt by what appeared. I was never told who made the claims about me. It is now clear that a central source for Charlie Bird's story was a man whom I never met and to whom I could not have said the things alleged of me. What was said about me was a tissue of lies," she added.
As a result of RTE's story, she had appeared on the front page of every newspaper in the country and had figured prominently on television and radio.
"I have been portrayed as a wrongdoer and a source of tension in Government. This has been due in large part because of dealings RTE said I had with someone I do not know and have never met," she said.
The least she and her family expected from "our national broadcaster" was an explanation as to how a prominent journalist could have been allowed to base a story "on anonymous statements by someone I have never met". She had been "blackened" on the basis of secret sources and was "saddened and outraged by what has happened".
Meanwhile, the RTE spokesman said that from the beginning of the investigation into NIB last January the station had requested an interview with the TD about her role in selling the CMI product. In advance of its June 19th report it had made repeated attempts to contact Ms Cooper-Flynn by letter and in person "to fully apprise her of the allegations being made and to give her a right to reply in advance of the broadcast".
On June 17th, two days before the report was broadcast, a letter was sent to her, but again there was no response. RTE would not name its sources without their consent, the spokesman said. RTE had yesterday afforded her "another opportunity" to respond to the allegations by way of an interview to be broadcast yesterday evening. Ms Cooper-Flynn had again declined the offer.