Ray Burke is a good example of this. And it didn't influence his behaviour either. This gives you a very good indication of how cosy and common the links are between business and political circles in Ireland. Plenty of other examples came out in The Dunnes' Payments Tribunal. The Dunnes Tribunal reveals that individuals in all the main parties have accepted money.
Slush money passing between business and the politicians is an everyday fact of life, it seems.
And Ireland, despite the huge explosion in profits for the bosses, is being squeezed for every penny. Just after this year's General Election, the Irish Times reported on an incident that serves to illustrate how powerful and prickly Big Business can be - there are no free lunches after all. This incident related to satellite TV services in Ireland. Secondly, the nature of this 'friendship' was the implementation of policy decisions that pleased Big Business. Thirdly, the 'reward' for the Government was good publicity in O'Reilly's various newspapers.