The two men, who are part of the consortium that last week bought the Montrose Hotel in Dublin for 40m, received the payments in consultancy fees and rents.

The largest payment, 3.9m, came from Castlehope, the company behind the 25m Castlehope commercial and residential development at Fairgreen Road in Galway city. According to its accounts, McNamara and O'Reilly received the payment for consultancy services provided during the year ending 31 March 2006.

They also received more than 2.2m in rental payments in 2005 from Castlehope's parent company, Shorelark, which runs the Radisson SAS Hotel at Lough Atalia, Galway.

According to Shorelark accounts, McNamara and O'Reilly, Shorelark's shareholders, own the hotel building and have entered into a 20-year lease with Shorelark.

However, it appears that Shorelark owns the land on which the hotel is built and it sold a portion of the site to the two men for 70,000 during the year.

The accounts also state that Shorelark owed the two men another 2.4m in rent at the end of 2005. As a result of the rental payments to McNamara and O'Reilly, Shorelark made a loss of 950,647 in 2005 compared to a profit of 473,275 the previous year.

By contrast, Castlehope made a profit for the year ending 31 March 2006 of over 4.9m, compared to a loss of 33,543 the previous year.

The parent of company of Castlehope and Shorelark is Adenway, an unlimited company which is not obliged to file its accounts publicly.