New broadside hits beleaguered Ahern in cash row

The Prime Minister, Bertie Ahern, struggling to stabilise his nine-year-old coalition government, braved a furious parliamentary debate over an alleged link between secret donations and the purchase of his Dublin home.

The Deputy Prime Minister, Michael McDowell, whose Progressive Democratic Party provides Mr Ahern with his parliamentary majority, was inexplicably absent from Mr Ahern's side as speculation mounted of a breakdown in trust. For two weeks, the Prime Minister has suffered a dripfeed of allegations and revelations about more than €60,000 (£40,500) he secretly received from 39 businessmen in 1993 and 1994, most of whom he says he cannot identify.

Mr Ahern, who has a reputation for speaking clumsily and with deliberate ambiguity, has repeatedly failed to answer questions fully in parliament. Now he has been broadsided by fresh allegations of dishonesty as media reports identified a businessman, Micheal Wall, as the man who sold Mr Ahern his Dublin home in 1997.

Mr Ahern said Mr Wall was at an October 1994 fund-raising function in Manchester when Mr Ahern received £8,000. He confirmed that Mr Wall did sell him his Dublin home in 1997. But Mr Ahern said there was no link between the two events because Mr Wall had not donated him any money. He said he paid "the full market rate" for the house, but refused to say what that was.