Cork businessman Michael O’Flynn has told the High Court he donated money to Lucinda Creighton's husband's political campaign.
Mr O’Flynn is suing the Fine Gael Minister of State for defamation over a speech she gave in Donegal two years ago as a back bencher.
In it, she said, there could be "no room in Fine Gael for cute hoor politics...which had defined and tainted public life like an incurable cancer.
"Fine Gael," she said, "could not be satisfied with low standards in high places... and could not, on the one hand, condemn Fianna Fáil for entertaining developers in the Galway tent, while on the other hand extend the biscuit tin for contributions from high-profile developers who are beholden to NAMA."
On his second day in the witness box, Mr O’Flynn said he believed Ms Creighton was attention-seeking in delivering the speech entitled Standards in Public Life and Accountability.
He said: "I look at her here in court and her husband is also a politician and I have contributed to his campaign in the past."
Ms Creighton is married to Cork Fine Gael TD Paul Bradford who was also present in court.
During cross-examination, he said a suggestion by Ms Creighton that a donation from a developer whose loans were with NAMA should be returned was "appalling".
In often testy exchanges during cross-examination by defence counsel Paul O’Higgins, he also said the whole point of the speech was to seek attention, which she subsequently succeeded in doing.
"She was looking for attention by mentioning something that politicians feed off," he said.
Earlier, he told Mr O’Higgins the fact that he was one of the top ten developers indebted to NAMA did not mean he was in some way "contaminated".
He remarked that the case was not about NAMA but confirmed he owed about €1bn.
Mr O’Flynn told the High Court an offer by Ms Creighton to make amends by putting a press release on her website in the days after the alleged defamed was insufficient.
Mr O’Flynn claims his reputation was tarnished in Ms Creighton’s speech and in subsequent interviews on RTÉ Radio and in The Irish Times.
In cross-examination by senior counsel Paul O'Higgins, Mr O'Flynn agreed that his attendance at a fundraising golf classic at the K Club had attracted a lot of media attention.
He agreed it was a talking point but did not accept it was a "major national topic" as Mr O'Higgins had suggested.
He said one Sunday newspaper had published four pages on the event, but not all of that was about him.
He could not recall seeing a column by former Fine Gael leader Garret FitzGerald about the undesirability of developers attending at the K Club event.
The trial continues.
