Former Dublin Lord Mayor Michael Keating has said political donations by development companies may have been a 'marriage of convenience' with public representatives.
However, Mr Keating said any suggestion that there would be any favour in return would be an anathema to everything he stood for in public life.
Mr Keating told the Mahon Tribunal he cannot remember receiving £1,600 from Monarch Properties while a Fine Gael representative on Dublin County Council, but did acknowledge another donation of £1,000 that was passed on to the party.
He said he did not feel uncomfortable receiving money from a company which had a rezoning application for lands at Cherrywood in south Dublin.
'That was the way fundraising was done at the time,' he said.
'It suited people fighting elections to receive donations and we knew in our hearts it would change nothing.
'The benefactor may have thought that by assisting people they would think they were good people.
'It may have been a marriage of convenience,' he added.
Former Fianna Fáil TD Marian McGennis also told the tribunal that she could not remember getting two payments totalling £1,600 recorded by Monarch Properties in the early 1990s.
Pat Quinn, SC for the inquiry pointed out that Ms McGennis had told her internal party inquiry that she had never received a donation of more than a couple of hundred pounds and it was unlikely she could have forgotten these.
'Well I have. I can't say on oath that I did not get this money,' she replied.
