The Dail was told about an anonymous note which alleged that the former Fianna Fail minister, Mr Ray Burke, demanded and received £30,000 from the Rennicks company during a meeting before the 1989 general election.

Mr Ruairi Quinn, the Labour Party leader, said his predecessor, Mr Dick Spring, received the anonymous note last autumn and passed it to the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern. Other Opposition parties also received similar notes, it emerged during the debate on the £30,000 donation.

Mr Quinn said Mr Spring told the Taoiseach that because the note was not signed "he would take no further action in relation to the issue but would leave it with the Taoiseach. We now know what the Taoiseach did with this information - precisely nothing."

Mr Quinn said it was important to note that "were it not for the fact that the Flood tribunal made an additional and unexpected order for discovery, this matter would most certainly not have come into the public domain".

When the full story became apparent it must have astonished Fianna Fail officials. "The Taoiseach in particular must have known also that the Dail had been misled. Why then did he not return to the House immediately and apprise it of the facts? Surely this would be the natural thing to do from a Taoiseach who had been misled by a former party colleague?"

He said the Taoiseach said he had conducted three "upside down and inside out" inquiries into Mr Burke's donations from JMSE which emerged in autumn last year.

The Socialist Party TD, Mr Joe Higgins (Dublin West) said the £30,000 donation to Mr Burke was equivalent to the average industrial wage in 1989 of three ordinary workers.

Any minister who accepted money from a developer or anyone in big business was seriously compromised and the relationship between developers, big business and Mr Burke was "rotten to the core".

This issue, however, was larger than the minister and went to the heart of the political system in the Irish Republic and to the heart of the establishment which dominated that system. A "golden circle" of big business and political parties had always been suspected and was proved to be real.