In a surprise personal statement to the Dail, the former minister Mr Michael Lowry has apologised for any "inadvertent, misleading impression" he may have given the House last December.

Mr Lowry took the opportunity to make the statement yesterday when the Dail resumed for the first of two days of business, including a statement by the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Burke, on the £30,000 contribution he received in 1989.

The statement was a response to references made to Mr Lowry in the report of the Dunnes payments inquiry which stated that part of his December 19th statement to the Dail "must be viewed with some astonishment".

In the final passage of that statement, Mr Lowry said he had not made any secret of the fact that Dunnes Stores paid him for professional services by way of assistance towards his house in Holy cross, Co Tipperary.

"If someone were trying to hide income, would he or she not be more likely to put it in an offshore account? The last thing such a person would do would be to spend it on a very obvious structure of bricks and mortar for all the world to see." he stated.

Mr Justice McCracken found in his report that this was an astonishing statement in the light of the fact that Mr Lowry had two offshore accounts in his own name, one in the Bank of Ireland in the Isle of Man and the other in an Allied Irish Banks subsidiary in Jersey. He had held money in an Isle of Man account in the name of Badgeworth Limited.

In a two-page response to the Dail yesterday, Mr Lowry said his comments about offshore accounts was intended to illustrate the point that he had made "no effort whatsoever" to conceal the fact that Dunnes Stores had paid for construction work to his house. However, "with the benefit of hindsight", he now accepted that the words he used were "most unfortunate and conveyed a misleading impression".

Mr Lowry added: "I fully accept responsibility for that. However, I categorically assure this House that it was not my intention to mislead and I offer my full and sincere apologies to you, Ceann Comhairle, and to all the members of the House then and now for having misled you in any way."

During the course of his earlier statement, he also referred to some payments made to him by Dunnes Stores. These, he said, were the payments he understood had been referred to in the Price Waterhouse report.

Mr Justice McCracken's report noted that he had not mentioned any other sums, including large payments, given to him by Dunnes. "I now accept, for completeness, I should have done so. I offer my full and sincere apologies also for this omission. Again, it was not my intention to mislead. I was in fact confining myself to what I understood to be references in the Price Waterhouse report," Mr Lowry said.

Admitting that he had contributed to his own "misfortune", he said he had not managed his affairs as well as he should have. Acknowledging his "mistakes", Mr Lowry said they related, not to his actions as an office holder, but to his "personal and financial affairs". "I have already paid and continue to pay a heavy price as a consequence," he said.

Asking for acceptance of his apology, he also pleaded for understanding in what were, for him, "very difficult times".