The defeated Fianna Fail backbencher qualifies for an index-linked pension of 50,000 a year plus a package of non-taxable termination payments estimated at around 270,000. The driver of an 07-reg Audi, he will also enjoy the privilege of free parking for life in the Leinster House car park.

Among the taxpayers who will foot the bill are farmers in the north-west who have never been paid for supplying animals to his meat company, Stanlow Trading Ltd, which went out of business in 1987 after only two years in operation.

Doubly incensed to learn that creditors in Ellis's old constituency of Sligo-Leitrim had been paid promptly, the Farmers Positive Action Group campaigned against him in the newly created constituency of Roscommon-South Leitrim in the May general election, when he lost his seat after 20 continuous years as a TD.

A flyer distributed by the group claimed: 'He codded us for three elections pretending that he would pay up. He didn't pay us. Bertie Ahern also knows of our plight, but he thumbed his nose at us by appointing Ellis to the chairmanship of the Oireachtas committee on transport. Support your Roscommon farmers. No votes for Ellis'.

Roscommon farmer David Nally, the eldest of 11 children whose father, Johnny, was left owed �14,600 ( 18,500) 20 years ago, says it broke his deceased parents' hearts.

Blunt reception "Imagine being owed that much money and 11 kids in the house. I was seven and I remember the banks coming out to our house and my father sick above in the bed. When my father died in 1989, my mother went to Ellis and asked him for the money to pay for the funeral but he wouldn't give it to her. She went to him three times. I was with her one of the times and we got a blunt reception. She was very upset about it right up to when she died two years ago, " he recalls.

"It affected every one of us in our family. None of us went to college.

Only four of the 11 of us finished school. We had to stay at home to help our mother. My mother never had a holiday in her life, except for one time when she stayed with her sister in America for three weeks. There was always stress in our house. Both my parents died of cancer at the age of 59. To see Ellis's poster up in our village asking people to vote for him was rightly rubbing our noses in it."

Stanlow Trading owed debts exceeding �300,000 ( 380,000) to 80 farmers when it was wound up in 1993 but it was a limited liability company with no statutory obligation on its owners personally to pay its creditors.

Out of pocket The company was set up by John Ellis and his brothers, Caillian, currently a Fianna Fail councillor in Ballinamore, and Richard, who acts as a financial adviser in the Isle of Man.

While he was president of the IFA in October 2000, Tom Parlon, now Progressive Democrats president, negotiated a settlement with John and Caillian Ellis under which it was greed that farmers would be paid the equivalent of 30 pence for every pound owed. Many farmers refused to accept its terms and remain out of pocket.

One such farmer was Joe Walshe from Knockmore, Co Mayo. Owed �6,750 . . . "the price of three motor cars back then" . . . he unsuccessfully sued Ellis in the Circuit Court and was ordered to pay the TD's costs. Walsh was subsequently visited by the sheriff and served with a bankruptcy summons in pursuit of the �2,701.13 bill for Ellis's costs. Walshe got a bank loan to pay the money.

"I feel very bitter, " he says, "but there's nothing we can do about it.

The taoiseach should have done something."

John Ellis, 55, has amassed considerable wealth since his company went bust. His TD's registration of interests last year listed his ownership of two houses in Carrick-onShannon and an apartment in Dublin, as well as his home on four acres in Fenagh, Co Leitrim, 153 acres of farmland and five development sites. His farm business is said to boast a sizeable herd of cattle and "the biggest slatted sheds in the county".

While he was pursuing Joe Walshe for his legal costs, the Fianna Fail backbencher and his wife, Patricia, were non-executive directors of the now defunct Indus Bank in Karachi, Pakistan. Its licence was revoked after a state investigation of fraud.

There was no suggestion of wrongdoing by Patricia and John Ellis.

Settled bankruptcy Back home in November 1999, John Ellis resigned as chairman of the Oireachtas committee on agriculture after it was revealed at the Moriarty tribunal that Charlie Haughey had given him �26,000 out of the Fianna Fail leaders' allowance account to clear his debts with Swinford and Manorhamilton marts.

It also emerged that National Irish Bank had settled bankruptcy proceedings against him in January 1990, accepting �20,000 as final payment of the �263,000 he owed. It is regarded by unpaid farmers as an unsavoury twist that NIB was the bank where his then fellow Fianna Fail backbencher from the west, Beverley Flynn, assisted in the evasion of tax. Despite facing bankruptcy proceedings initiated by RTE, she has been earmarked by Bertie Ahern for promotion to a junior ministry.

In November 2004, the taoiseach infuriated Ellis's farmer-creditors by appointing the Leitrim TD chairman of the Oireachtas committee on transport, a position which added 10,000 a year to his Dail earnings and which he held until losing his seat.