The gloves had come off, yesterday, by the end of former JMSE financial director Mr Roger Copsey's third day in the witness box.
His parting statement to the Flood tribunal was: "Being naive, I did not think Jim Gogarty would have marched up to someone with a great big brown envelope and said: `You give me planning permission on foot of this'. "
He had just had a gruelling two hours, courtesy of Mr Des O'Neill SC, counsel for the tribunal, who led him along the less than labyrinthine paper trail that ended in a funds flow statement prepared by his accountancy colleague, Mr Tim O'Keeffe.
Mr O'Neill's inquiry as to the exact status of the document elicited the response that the exercise on which it was based was not an integral part of the "accountancy function" proper - and neither was it part of the audit function.
It was simply an aidememoire, said Mr Copsey. Its interest for the tribunal was the fact that it had the arresting designation, "Enhancement Expenses" - payments to Dublin County Council for services, planning permission etc - and separately, under the same heading, £30,000 cash, for planning permission.
Mr Copsey was unequivocal. This was the £30,000 that had been processed originally through JMSE through an inter-company arrangement involving land companies Grafton Construction and Reliable.
He was sufficiently familiar with the cash-flow position of the Murphy land and operating companies to be able to say this definitively.
Earlier, he had described the process which gave rise to the payment. Mr Gogarty, the executive chairman of JMSE, had requisitioned the sum of £30,000 as a political donation.
Mr Copsey had informed Mr Denis McArdle, solicitor for the land companies, whom he knew had funds available in an ICC account on foot of land sales, to cover the money.
JMSE had a fluctuating cashflow profile - and it was prudent to draw the monies from the cash-rich land companies, just in case.
Mr McArdle suggested bank drafts instead of the requested amounts of £20,000 cash and a £10,000 cheque for cash, because he was concerned for the safety of his secretary who would have had to draw such a large amount of cash from the bank.
In the event, Mr Gogarty decided that he would take the money directly from the JMSE account.
A couple of points are of particular relevance here. First, the money that Mr Gogarty was proposing to pay Mr Ray Burke was substantial. It was the equivalent, said Mr Copsey, of 66 per cent of JMSE's net profits for 1987. He did not demur, he conceded, when Mr Gogarty took the £30,000 directly out of JMSE: "There were a number of things that Joe Murphy and Jim Gogarty did together. My view was that this was something between the two of them. Joe had chosen not to raise the subject. Because he had not, I would not raise the subject with him."
Mr Murphy snr was an "intensely private man" and he took his cue from him: "If you scratch below the surface with most Irish people you find problems in political matters. If Joe Murphy wanted to give £30,000 to a political party it was no part of mine to question whether he should or not. It could have gone back to the Civil War." Secondly, his `non-action' was "incorrect" in the event, the former financial director conceded. He would very much like to have made inquiries and sworn everything before a commissioner for oaths so that on appearing before the tribunal everything was "an open and shut book".
Had he not considered that there had been a strained relationship for some time between Mr Murphy and Mr Gogarty when the latter asked him for the money? There was no direct correlation, he answered. Strained relationships in business were not unique: "I didn't expect people, even in that context, to start drawing cheques for £30,000 and making political donations without clearance."