Foster forced to return to Australia

The convicted fraudster Peter Foster was deported to Australia yesterdayafter immigration officials refused him entry to Ireland.

Mr Foster, 40, was escorted to an aeroplane at Dublin airport with his head covered by a blanket, little more than a month after his role in a property deal with Cherie Blair caused serious embarrassment for the Government.

He was seized when he landed at the airport on Monday afternoon after a weekend trip to France to see his girlfriend, Mrs Blair's style guru, Carole Caplin. He was then held overnight at the city's Mountjoy prison.

He has been dividing his time between Spain and the Republic of Ireland, where his mother has a flat, since a political row broke out over his involvement in helping Mrs Blair to obtain a discounted price for two flats in Bristol. Mrs Blair only admitted that Mr Foster had helped her buy property after leaked e-mails showed his involvement.

Mr Foster was driven from the jail in a van with blacked-out windows. He was then flown to an undisclosed European location before catching a transfer back to Australia, where he is wanted over a £1.4m fraud case.

Immigration officials would not reveal why he had been barred from the country but said non-nationals could be refused leave if they had served a prison sentence.

Earlier this month he dropped his appeal against deportation from Britain after he was ordered to leave because his presence in the country was not "conducive to the public good".

Meanwhile, it was reported that Ms Caplin has been given a one-year contract worth about £100,00 to write a health and lifestyle column for The Mail on Sunday, the newspaper that led the campaign against Mrs Blair over the Bristol flats affair.