Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern defended himself on Sunday for taking cash from businessmen in the 1990s, saying the payments were made at a time of "great personal turmoil" following the breakdown of his marriage.
Ahern, who was finance minister and briefly deputy prime minister at the time, made the comments in the midst of an uphill battle to win a general election on May 24.
Questions over Ahern's finances have dominated campaigning after reports that in late 1994, Manchester businessman Michael Wall gave 30,000 pounds ($59,330) to Ahern's then partner Celia Larkin to fund work on a house bought by Wall.
Ahern then rented the home and bought it in 1997. "The issues ... such as why I was renting a house, why my friends gave me money and why I did not operate a bank account for a period of years - are all related to my judicial separation," Ahern told the Sunday Independent newspaper.
The revelations are part of a long-running payments scandal that last year prompted calls for Ahern to resign.
He headed off those demands in October by making an emotional televised apology for accepting other payments from friends and businessmen in 1993 and 1994 that he said had been loans to help cover the legal costs of his separation.
Details of Ahern's finances emerged from evidence given in private to a tribunal probing corrupt property planning deals. Ahern said the leak was an attack meant to damage him and his Fianna Fail party.
"I cannot believe that it is a coincidence that just as the election campaign got underway, the private proceedings of the Mahon tribunal ... were illegally leaked to the media," he said. The tribunal is one of a number of inquiries over the last decade into high-level corruption and murky political practices.
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