Twice expelled from the Fianna Fáil parliamentary party during the last Dáil, Ms Beverley Cooper Flynn now faces renewed scrutiny over financial advice she gave to her father, the former Minister Padraig Flynn, when she was working with National Irish Bank.
The pressure on the Castlebar TD comes as the Mahon tribunal prepares to hear a claim that Mr Flynn kept for himself a £50,000 donation from the British-based builder, Mr Tom Gilmartin, in 1989. Mr Gilmartin intended the donation for Fianna Fáil.
Ms Cooper Flynn's involvement in the affair follows a TV3 report which said the £50,000 cheque was initially lodged in a bogus non-resident bank account in the name of Mr Flynn and his wife. The report went on to say half of that money was subsequently invested offshore, on the advice of Ms Cooper Flynn.
It was these allegations that led Ms Cooper Flynn to deliver her personal statement to the Dáil last night. While the Fianna Fáil Standards in Public Office committee will examine her case today, it will not make any detailed inquiries until the tribunal hears evidence.
The future of Ms Cooper Flynn's political career may well turn on the findings to be made by the tribunal. However, her previous record demonstrates an ability to win votes in spite the difficulties she has encountered since entering the Dáil.
As a high-ranking bank executive with powerful family connections in Fianna Fáil, she seemed certain of a fast-track route into the Dáil when she first sought election in the 1994 by-election that followed her father's appointment to the EU Commission. This failed when Fine Gael's Mr Michael Ring took the seat.
Her election to the Dáil came in 1997. In the next election, in 2002, she took the final seat in Mayo. Some 6,661 people gave her their first preference vote.
This was despite her unsuccessful libel action against RTÉ in 2001, when she was found by a jury to have encouraged or advised people to evade tax. The case, which prompted her second expulsion from the parliamentary party, is now the subject of a Supreme Court appeal.
The first expulsion came in 1999 after she defied the Fianna Fáil party whip when the Dáil asked Mr Padraig Flynn to clarify his position in relation to the allegation by Mr Gilmartin. "A Flynn must support a Flynn," she said then. It was characteristic gesture of support to the father who famously described her as a "class act".
After each of her expulsions, she was welcomed back into the Fianna Fáil parliamentary party by the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern. He went to Castlebar during the 2002 election campaign to pose for photographs with Ms Flynn and her father.
Still, the response in the party to Ms Cooper Flynn's latest difficulties suggests a certain weariness among TDs.
"Sympathy is not the word," said one yesterday. "We'd all prefer that these things would not happen, but they do."
