Rabbitte acknowledged that McDowell had given a "minimally more respectful" response to questions than last month but said that "we still don't know what transpired at the meeting".

The "suspicion lingers" that the minister was looking for negative information on former Fine Gael justice minister Nora Owen, he added.

Last month, Rabbitte accused McDowell of giving a "calculated two-fingered gesture of contempt for the Dail" by giving a one-line answer to the series of questions on his meeting with private detective Billy Flynn in June of last year.

The meeting, at Flynn's house in Meath, took place just days before a crucial Dail debate on the findings of the Morris tribunal. McDowell obtained a large volume of documents concerning representations which Flynn . . .

widely regarded as the person whose information helped uncover the scandal . . . had made to Owen.

Rabbitte yesterday questioned the "propriety" of the justice minister's attending such a meeting, given the subject and the fact that he didn't know if Flynn might be a future witness at the Morris tribunal.

McDowell said "the individual named in the deputy's question" had frequently contacted him on a personal basis, sometimes by phone and sometimes by writing. In this case, the "person in question had contacted me in the preceding week and had indicated that he was apprehensive that in a forthcoming debate in the house that things might be said on which he could throw additional light".

McDowell said he was travelling west and because the person in question lived along his route, he contacted him to see if he would be at home.

"We had a lengthy conversation on a number of topics, chiefly centring on his personal involvement with the McBrearty family and the Morris tribunal but also with other personal matters."

The minister said copies of documents he received at the "personal" meeting . . . at which no official was present . . . were already in the hands of the department and had been made available to the tribunal.