Mr. Tom Parlon:

Well, certainly lately, there's been little or no donations and I think they haven't been sought but I think at that time, and I read Elaine's report and clearly it researched quite accurately through the contributions that were put on the record. It probably illustrated that that's where the money appeared to be at the time. Political parties clearly sought donations as well. I have some experience of running an election campaign and it's a very expensive business, so builders and developers and, you know ... we need to make a distinction here. The CIF represents the builders. We did have some builders-developers but there were a lot of big developers out there and investors and some recently very high-profile people that were ... that had no experience in building, that had invested over €1 billion in property around the world, and were part of the whole problem that we have. But certainly, you know, they were a target, I'm sure, for political parties as well. They probably had their own original ... you know, back in the day when I was running for election in 2002 in Laois-Offaly, you were either Fine Gael or you were Fianna Fáil.

There wasn't too many other parties around at the time and people that would have been in business at that time were one way or the other, and I'm sure they were approached and made their contributions.