However, the Defence Minister has hit back and said that Cllr Ryan's electoral record and performance as a councillor has left her "as a person, utterly without credibility."

In a scathing letter to An Taoiseach, Cllr Ryan says convicted criminals "should not be aided and abetted by any member of the Government or indeed any member of the Fianna Fail party."

Figures were published earlier this week which show that Minister O'Dea facilitated 29 representations. Amongst them were a request for the transfer of a murder suspect back to Limerick from Dublin prison, the Christmas Day release of a drug dealer and the temporary release of another drug dealer so he could get married.

The Minister subsequently insisted that the majority or requests were made to him when he was Minister of State at the Department of Justice and that he never made representations seeking mitigation or leniency on behalf of any prisoner involved in Limerick's criminal feud.

Cllr Ryan told the Limerick Leader this Wednesday that it is difficult for her and other members of the party to "accept people of low standards and dangerous practices."

Minister O'Dea said that he was amazed that, "of all people", Cllr Ryan was calling for high standards.

"In another way I'm not surprised because it just shows this continued obsession she has with me. She blames me for the fact that tens of thousands of people didn't vote for her in the general election that did for me." he told the Limerick Leader.

"This is a grab for cheap publicity to conceal her utter inactivity and lack of performance as a councillor," O'Dea continued.

"The electorate had a chance to pass a verdict on Ms Ryan at the general election and it was a very damning verdict indeed. Her performance in the election was pitiful. You should bear in mind that she is living in one of the most populous areas of the Castleconnell electoral area and she still only barely managed to hold on to the County Council seat in the local elections.

The Minister added that he would not be calling for Cllr Ryan's expulsion from the Fianna Fail party as a result of the letter, as he would trust the electorate to do that for him at the next local elections.

This is not the first time in recent weeks that Cllr Ryan has been critical of Minister O'Dea or her fellow party members. At a County Council meeting in November to discuss the agriculture cuts proposed in the budget, she claimed that all her superiors in Government were interested in was "the size of the Mercs they get to travel in."

"The Budget shows how removed they are from people and from us. They say - and we have two Ministers here in East Limerick - that they have had no input into decision making. But I don't know where the country is going. How can a country run by the corrupt ever have prosperity? I was born into Fianna Fail, but it was not the Fianna Fail that I see now," she said at the meeting.