Taoiseach Bertie Ahern is likely to face questions in the Dáil today about links between the National Lottery and Norman Turner, the Manchester tycoon who planned a casino in Dublin in the 1990s on the site of the former Phoenix Park racecourse.
Mr Ahern is already under intense political pressure after the former NCB chief Pádraic O'Connor and one of Mr O'Connor's senior colleagues disputed his account of how money from the stockbroking company ended up in his personal funds.
Now he will have to respond to claims from another businessman - former An Post chief John Hynes - that he gave "implicit approval" when he was minister for finance to the National Lottery's engagement with Mr Turner's Sonas consortium. Mr Ahern disputes that, pointing out that he ultimately opposed the casino.
While the talks did not lead to a formal contract between the Lottery and Sonas, the Lottery saw the engagement as being in its own interest. As a gaming organisation whose business might be threatened by a big casino in Dublin, its involvement in the talks was "defensive" and designed to give it "control" over the project.
But the Opposition smells blood. With the Taoiseach's credibility seriously in question as a result of Mr O'Connor's evidence, he is further undermined in the eyes of Fine Gael and Labour by Mr Hynes's remarks.
The central difficulty for Mr Ahern is that his public opposition to the casino is at odds with Mr Hynes's assertion that he supported the Lottery's talks with Mr Turner. Such support would have been in conflict with his public opposition to the project. Yet as a leading figure in semi-State business for many years, Mr Hynes is very unlikely to have gone down that path if he believed it would create difficulty for him.
That Mr Turner gave $10,000 in 1994 to Des Richardson, then chief fundraiser for Fianna Fáil, adds spice to the intrigue. While alleged dollar lodgements and links with Manchester are central to other controversies involving the Taoiseach, this money does not figure among the significant funds that ended up in Mr Ahern's own pocket. Mr Richardson says he spent it on corporate gifts linked to golf fundraisers and the Galway Races.
But the secretive payment to the dominant Government party still took place at a time when Mr Turner was trying to advance a politically sensitive project in the face of opposition around the racecourse. The casino would have included a large number of slot machines, a prospect that horrified local people.
As minister for finance, Mr Ahern had direct political responsibility for the Lottery. It is the position of the Department of Finance that it knew of the Lottery's talks with Mr Turner but that the matter of specific political approval did not arise as there was no firm commercial proposal on the table.
Still, Mr Hynes says there was no question in his mind that his "lines were clear" with his political master. From his contacts with civil servants, he says he was fully satisfied that Mr Ahern did not demur from his contact with the consortium.
He further adds that Mr Turner maintained that Mr Ahern "was known to him, was aware of all aspects of the project, and was not opposed to the casino".
He says also that meetings were attended by Robert White, who he understood to be an associate of Mr Ahern and was "keeping an eye" on the political dimension to the project and its potential impact on Mr Ahern's position as a Dublin TD.
"I was now comfortable that the National Lottery Company was not operating outside an envelope of departmental and ministerial approval. The minister had two open channels providing feedback of the discussions, one official and one party political."
The Lottery signed a "non-disclosure agreement" with Sonas.
