Independent TD Michael Healy-Rae has criticised what he said were "untruths" around his Dáil attendance and insisted he has done nothing wrong.
He told Radio Kerry that he was in the Dáil on the morning of 21 June 2018 but left early to attend a burial in south Kerry of the uncle of his son-in-law.
He was speaking following reports that he was absent from the address of European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker on that date even though he had clocked in to the Dáil that morning.
The controversy was first raised last year when his constituency colleague, Fianna Fáil's John Brassil, criticised him for not being present during Mr Juncker's speech while he was chair of the Oireachtas committee on European Affairs.
He said at the time that he was absent because of a bereavement. Dáil records showed that an ID tag held by him was used to register him as present for that day.
TDs are required to clock in using a fob on 120 days of the year in order to qualify for the travel and accommodation allowance (TAA) of up to €34,000 a year.
Mr Healy-Rae said it would not have made any difference whether he fobbed in on that particular day or not because he was there for a lot more than the required days.
This morning he told Jerry O'Sullivan on Radio Kerry that he had arrived in the Dáil around 7am that morning and left around 8am, but that he "cannot swear to this because I don't write down the times".
He said: "Very seldom in my life did I ever go into the Dáil at 7.30am quite simply because it is too late. I get in a lot earlier than that; the first couple of hours in the morning are the most important of the day."
Asked how he managed to make it down to Sneem in Kerry in time for a funeral, he said: "I wasn't at the funeral. I didn't make the funeral. I wasn't at the church. I made it at the graveyard. It was the burial I made. I didn't make the mass, I was late for the mass, I made the graveyard."
He criticised comments from journalists that suggested he must have been in Kerry the night before because he did an interview for Virgin Media through Skype.
"Every one of them repeated the untruth. But I had done a Skype interview from Dublin on the Wednesday night and I can prove I was in Dublin," he said.
