Beverley Cooper-Flynn lowered her head and started crying, her sobs amplified by the microphone in the witness box.
The Mayo TD's tears began to flow as she recalled receiving a letter from RTE's Charlie Bird seeking her response to allegations due to be broadcast about investment schemes she had sold.
Recordings of these news items - played to the court on television monitors - contained allegations that Ms Cooper-Flynn once sold investment products aimed at helping people to evade tax.
The mood of the packed courtroom had been subdued until this point in Ms Cooper-Flynn's evidence, in the mid afternoon. Earlier, she had related in painstaking detail features of an offshore investment product she sold when she was a financial consultant with National Irish Bank (NIB).
She seemed to lapse effortlessly into sales pitch mode as she described how this personal portfolio product from Clerical and Medical International (CMI) had unique features, was individually tailored and allowed investors' funds to grow tax-free.
"It was a legitimate and very tax-efficient way of investing money," she said.
Allegations made on RTE that Ms Cooper-Flynn sold this product to help customers hide money from the tax man are central to the libel case, which is expected to run for up to three weeks.
Ms Cooper-Flynn, soberly dressed in a black trouser suit and pale gold top, delivered her evidence precisely and calmly, regularly looking directly at the jurors.
Mr Bird, wearing a dark navy suit and blue shirt, sat or stood at the rear of the courtroom throughout, sometimes taking notes. Several members of the jury glanced at him as Ms Cooper-Flynn described how he had become "hot and bothered" during one of their telephone conversations. RTE's special correspondent showed no reaction.
Ms Cooper-Flynn described how Mr Bird pursued her to the Slieve Russell Hotel in Co Cavan where she was attending a Fianna Fail conference. She awoke the following morning in room 519 to find a letter from him pushed under the door.
"I was quite shocked to put it mildly, very shocked," she told her counsel before she broke down in tears and was comforted by her sister, Ms Sharon Dunleavy.