The man owed €3,300 by Jim Gavin said he contacted Fianna Fáil on Saturday after it issued a statement saying its presidential nominee had “no recollection” of a dispute with a former tenant.
Media disclosure of the debt arising from the overpayment of rent in 2009 led Mr Gavin to decide to withdraw from the presidential election late on Sunday night.
Referring to the non-payment of the debt, Mr Gavin said he “made a mistake that was not in keeping with my character and the standards I set myself”.
The debt arose after the tenant overpaid rent to Mr Gavin in 2009.
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Efforts to have the money repaid were unsuccessful, despite Mr Gavin telling the tenant that the money would be repaid, according to the former tenant, who does not want to be identified.
On Friday, the Fianna Fáil press office told the Irish Independent that Mr Gavin “does not have any recollection or records of any such dispute, and they have reviewed all the records they have from 16 years ago”.
The next day, the tenant contacted the Fianna Fáil press office and urged them not to issue any statements that would suggest the tenant was being untruthful.
He says he advised the office not to pour “cold water on the story” or suggest that Mr Gavin could not remember the issue.
He offered to show them a copy of the solicitor’s letter he sent to Mr Gavin in 2010 outlining how the overpayment came about and seeking repayment of €3,300.
The Fianna Fáil office said they would get back to him, but no one has been in contact since then and the debt remains unpaid, the man said.
The solicitor’s letter outlines how, in early 2009, the man terminated his tenancy of an apartment owned by Mr Gavin and his wife in Blackhall Square, Smithfield, in Dublin’s north inner city.
The rent was being paid by direct debits, some of which mistakenly continued to be made to Mr Gavin’s bank account for several months after the tenancy ended. These payments totalled €3,300.
The solicitor’s letter said that “despite numerous assurances from you to our client, you have to date failed to repay our client”.
It said that if payment was not made within two weeks, legal proceedings would be brought.
Although the money was not repaid, the man never sued because of the costs involved in taking court proceedings, he said. At the time, he and his partner were expecting their first child.
“It was a really unpleasant thing to happen to me – to have the money taken and not given back,” he said.
The debt was too big for the Small Claims Court, the section of the District Court where people can seek recovery of outstanding debts, the man said. When he went to file a complaint with the Residential Tenancies Board, he found that Mr Gavin had not registered the tenancy.
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He understood, he said, that Mr Gavin and his wife had financial difficulties at the time, “but we were in dire financial straits and €3,000 is a lot of money".
The man said he had “a good bit of sympathy” for the former Fianna Fáil presidential nominee.
“It is something that happened a long time ago. We all make mistakes.”
Asked how the story had come to be reported in the media, he said everyone who knows him has known for years about the unpaid debt.
The man said he did not feel guilty about the collapse of Mr Gavin’s campaign, but he was surprised and did feel sympathy.
