For a developer who has built over 3,000 houses in Dublin, Mr Michael Bailey appears to know remarkably little about rezoning land or obtaining planning permissions.
Mr Bailey told the Flood tribunal yesterday that he knew "very little" about planning applications; he could not even say whether planning permissions expired after five years or seven years.
Asked in the morning what his role was in the family business, he said it was "hands-on" but mainly confined to deciding on house types. He did not meet local authority officials or county councillors, or lobby for rezoning of land; that was a matter for his architect.
But by the afternoon, under repeated questioning, Mr Bailey's story had changed.
He agreed that the role he envisaged for himself in his proposal to develop the Murphy lands in north Co Dublin jointly in 1989 was to lobby community councils and local representatives for the rezoning of the lands.
He also recalled attending a meeting of Dublin Corporation with Mr James Gogarty. It was a typical twist on a day when Mr Bailey's evidence often seemed likely to descend into farce.
Throughout the proceedings, the witness displayed a considerable frailty of memory in relation to his land dealings, particularly those with Mr Gogarty.
The expression "I have no idea" was used over 20 times.
Mr Bailey even queried the number of acres of land he bought from the Murphys. He said it was 720 acres, when his own purchase proposal letter put the total area of land at 726 acres.
For much of the afternoon Mr Des O'Neill SC, for the tribunal, tried to get him to estimate by how much these lands would have increased in value if they were rezoned, as Mr Bailey proposed in his famous letter of June 8th, 1989.
In the letter to Mr Gogarty, Mr Bailey promised that he would try to "procure" planning permission on the lands.
If he was successful in changing agricultural lands "with limited potential" into "highly valuable" building lands, he wanted a 50 per cent stake.
Mr O'Neill wanted to know how valuable "highly valuable" was. But Mr Bailey resisted all attempts to pin him down.
"I'm a businessman, not a valuer," he exclaimed.
Zoning would not make any difference to the value of lands, he said at one point. "If you can't pull the chain, zoning is not worth the paper it's written on. If you don't have the services for a toilet, it's not worth even agricultural prices."
How could Mr Bailey propose the arrangement outlined in his letter if he did not know what the end result would be? Mr O'Neill asked.
"I had no idea what the land would be worth," the witness replied.
Mr Bailey eventually bought the lands for £2.3 million. But how much would they be worth after a rezoning?
Mr O'Neill suggested a value of £30,000 an acre, which would have given an overall value of £21 million.
Mr Bailey's share of this admittedly hypothetical figure would have been £10.5 million, all in return for an input of £300,000 for professional fees and planning charges.
The witness rejected this proposal as unfair. "You can't value something based on what it hasn't got."
Later Mr Justice Flood intervened to say that the witness was "declining entirely" to deal with the question.
However, Mr Bailey said he was being "blocked" from answering and offered to deal with each parcel of land under consideration if he was given a pointer and a map on the giant screen at the back of the hall.
Another hour was taken up with an argument as to whether the June 8th letter to Mr Gogarty was a proposal for discussion, as stated at the start, or an offer to buy the lands.
Was there a difference? The chairman tried to resolve the issue by way of analogy.
"If you make a proposal to sell me your watch for £10 and I say thank you, here's £10, and you hand your watch to me . . .", the proposal was "capable of being accepted," he said.
"The buyer has the option of buying and the seller has the option of selling," the witness replied.
Mr Bailey said Mr Gogarty represented himself as the sole agent for selling the lands, and he wanted a finder's fee.
"There was never nobody else involved."
Surprisingly, he did not calculate the figures contained in the letter proposing to buy the lands or develop them jointly with the Murphys.
He did not even keep a copy of the letter, though he later made amendments in writing on the original.
He said the second proposal, to develop the lands jointly, was not suggested beforehand by Mr Gogarty, but was only thrown in "to keep the door open" in case the outright purchase proposal was not accepted.
Mr O'Neill pointed out that the previous year Mr Bailey bought 22 acres at Forest Road, Swords, from Murphys for £1.45 million.
Although Mr O'Neill did not extrapolate, at this rate the north Dublin lands would have been worth about £47 million.
However, Mr Bailey said this comparison could not be made.
The witness recalled that after Murphys increased the selling price he originally agreed with Mr Gogarty by £200,000, he accused Mr Gogarty of "gazumping" him.
Mr Gogarty got into "a fire of rage" and went for Mr Bailey with his umbrella, he said.