Mr Denis O'Brien returned to the witness box yesterday, following his unexpected absence of a week to be with his wife and new daughter.
Near the end of the day the counsel for the tribunal, Mr John Coughlan SC, forcefully made the point that it was not until recently, and when he was asked about the matter, that Mr O'Brien disclosed the existence of an account he had with AIB in the Isle of Man in the summer of 1996.
Mr O'Brien, in response, said he hadn't been clear about the existence of the account until he'd had his financial advisers investigate the matter. The tribunal is interested in the account because it was used by Mr O'Brien for the purchase of a Spanish townhouse from the late Mr David Austin in the summer of 1996.
Mr Austin subsequently transferred the money on to Mr Michael Lowry.
The tribunal is focusing on these transactions, which form a central part of a jigsaw of events which occurred in the summer and autumn of 1996 and all of which may, or may not, be linked.
In December 1995, in the wake of Esat Digifone being awarded its mobile phone licence, a major element of the Digifone consortium, Telenor, made a political donation to Fine Gael. The money was lodged to an offshore account belonging to Mr Austin, and stayed there for more than a year before being passed on to Fine Gael.
Mr Austin was a close friend of Mr O'Brien and the origin of the donation lay in an approach by Mr Austin to Mr O'Brien.
In the summer of 1996 Mr Austin sold the Spanish townhouse to Mr O'Brien, for £150,000 sterling. According to Mr O'Brien, Mr Austin asked for the money to come from an offshore account. This is what happened. The money came from the Isle of Man account, which was opened around July 1996 to receive £400,000 Mr O'Brien had been owed by a Swedish company. And all of this money was "dispersed" within a week or two.
Mr Austin opened a Jersey account to receive the £150,000 sterling. In October 1996 he sent £147,000 of the £150,000 sterling to a newly opened account in the Isle of Man, belonging to Mr Lowry. Mr Lowry is to say the money was intended as a loan.
A month after the money landed in Mr Lowry's account, another crucial event took place. This time it was a conversation. Mr O'Brien says that on Sunday, November 17th, 1996, he was out for a run in the Wicklow mountains with Mr Barry Maloney, the then chief executive of Esat Digifone.
He told Mr Maloney he had paid £200,000 in relation to the Digifone licence. Mr Maloney says Mr Lowry was identified as the recipient of £100,000 of this money.
The comment was investigated in great detail by Esat Digifone and Mr O'Brien's company, Esat Telecom, in September/October 1997. Esat Telecom was being launched on the US Nasdaq and if there were any skeletons in the cupboard the directors would be leaving themselves open to multi-million dollar suits.
Mr O'Brien told the intense investigation by lawyers here and in the US that he had only been joking.
He also said he had been thinking of giving Mr Lowry £100,000 and had earmarked money in Woodchester Bank for this purpose.
This was on his mind when he made the comment, or joke, to Mr Maloney. He never made the payment, he said. He told the lawyers that the intended payment got "stuck" with an "intermediary" and did not go ahead. He said Woodchester was the "intermediary".
The 1997 inquiry involved a thorough investigation of all Mr O'Brien's known accounts, most of all of which were in Woodchester Bank.
Mr O'Brien did not tell the lawyers about the Isle of Man account. It was closed at the time, he said yesterday.
The lawyers were also investigating the Telenor payment to Mr Austin, fearing that the money had gone to Mr Lowry rather than Fine Gael.
Mr Austin was a significant figure on their horizons at the time, but Mr O'Brien said he was only vaguely aware of this, as he was on a busy schedule in the US. This was another reason why he did not think of mentioning the matter.