( AP ) - Prime Minister Bertie Ahern narrowly defeated an attempt Wednesday to oust him from office because he took secret cash payments from businessmen.
Ahern faced his first-ever "no confidence" vote in parliament following his testimony this month to a corruption tribunal, which has unearthed payments to Ahern in the mid-1990s that exceed $140,000.
After a bitter 3 1/2-hour debate, lawmakers in Ahern's three-party coalition voted to keep supporting him even though such payments break current ethics laws - and, according to opposition leaders, Ahern obstructed and told lies to the taxpayer-funded investigation.
"The problem here is we don't believe you. I don't believe your story. I believe your story at the tribunal was a cock-and-bull story. And I think a lot of people in this country agree with me," Eamon Gilmore, leader of the opposition Labour Party, told a glum-faced Ahern.
The no-confidence vote was the first in Ireland since 1992.
Ahern, who has won popularity for a decade of peacemaking and growing prosperity, prevailed in an 81-76 vote straight down party lines, he faces further damaging months of testimony in the probe.
In his speech opening the debate, Ahern sought to defend his taking money from wealthy friends and acquaintances on the grounds he was struggling financially in the wake of a marriage breakdown.
The suspicious cash deposits into newly opened bank accounts belonging to him and his girlfriend "started within 30 days of the ending of my matrimonial proceedings," he said, referring to his court-ordered separation settlement. Divorce was not legalized in Ireland until 1997 and Ahern remains married.
Opposition chiefs derided Ahern's bid for public sympathy, an expressed doubts that the money-taking happened in the circumstances he described to the three-judge tribunal. They noted that Ahern had initially claimed to be broke when friends began offering him cash unsolicited, but later admitted that he had the equivalent of $100,000 in his office safe in 1994 even before receiving any of the donations.
Enda Kenny, leader of the opposition Fine Gael party, called Ahern's explanations for how he got the money "fairy tales." He asserted that Ahern's vaguely recalled events of friends offering unsolicited money "never happened."
Several speakers compared Ahern's money-taking to the sins of former Prime Minister Charles Haughey, whose scandal-plagued career ended in 1992. Haughey, who died last year, was subsequently forced to admit he took $14 million from Ireland's business elite while in office.
Ahern, who came to power in 1997 on a pledge to clean up Fianna Fail, authorized two parallel corruption probes that exposed how party veterans used their public offices to gain private riches. Initially, he attracted no personal suspicion of wrongdoing.
That changed in 2001 after a London property developer accused Ahern of taking $142,000 in 1989 and 1992 to help a rival win a contract to build one of Dublin's top shopping malls. Ahern, who was Fianna Fail treasurer and Ireland's finance minister during the period - when he also had no personal bank accounts - has vociferously denied receiving a penny from the developer.
A tribunal probing bribery among politicians, lobbyists and property developers says it has spent the past 2 1/2 years trying to identify the source of funds in Ahern's 1994-95 accounts.
Ahern's supporters unanimously argued Wednesday that parliament should take no punitive action against Ahern until after investigators complete their work.