After weeks of hints and suggestions, the planning tribunal yesterday laid bare its frustration with the former minister for foreign affairs, Mr Ray Burke, and the two builders at the centre of its investigations.
Since last October, the tribunal has been trying to extract statements from the three parties, but with little success. Mostly, it emerges, Mr Burke and the developer Mr Michael Bailey have submitted flat denials of the allegations made about them by Mr James Gogarty.
Both men submitted the statements 10 weeks after they were first asked, and only hours before the tribunal started hearing Mr Gogarty's evidence in public last week.
Lawyers for Joseph Murphy Structural Engineering at first prepared detailed statements for submission to the tribunal. However, they later sent on only short statements, and blamed a series of media leaks for their decision not to provide more details.
Outlining his dissatisfaction with the approach of the three parties, Mr Pat Hanratty SC, for the tribunal, said the tribunal had not received "the level of co-operation or anything like it" that it needed.
He accused Mr Burke of adopting a "minimalist" approach by filing a short statement which provided no information by which the tribunal could establish the truth or otherwise of Mr Gogarty's allegations about paying £80,000 to Mr Burke in 1989.
Mr Hanratty has warned of "chaos" if the three parties are allowed to cross-examine Mr Gogarty without first showing their hands by filing a statement. He said they were not entitled to "ambush, spring traps or surprise the witness, or pull rabbits out of hats".
Since Mr Gogarty supplied all parties with his version of events, it was only fair to him that others did the same, he argued.
However, his surprise suggestion that all witnesses give their evidence before cross-examination begins left the other parties distinctly underwhelmed. Mr Gogarty's adversaries have explicitly stated they want to retain the element of surprise and are not prepared to defer their right to cross-examination. They also object to the gap in time which would arise between his main evidence and its testing in cross-examination.
Ironically, the morning was dominated not by Mr Gogarty's evidence or the gathering legal challenge the tribunal is facing, but by a further allegation of a leak. Mr McGonigal wasted no time in turning the previous evening's Tonight with Vincent Browne radio show into the centrepiece of proceedings. But his claim that a journalist's comment about Mr Burke seemed to constitute a leak "of the most serious kind" turned out to be unfounded.
By afternoon, the matter was resolved with an apology and an admission by the journalist that she had not, as stated on the programme, talked to any tribunal lawyers. But Mr McGonigal had made his point, and the media had been warned.
With all this going on, Mr Gogarty's actual evidence seemed, and was, less dramatic than in previous days. He was "clearly unwell", in the words of his own counsel, and looked pale and drawn in the witness-box. As a result, hearing of his evidence will not resume until Tuesday.
For the second time, he adverted to his desire that Mr Joseph Murphy snr should avail of the tax amnesty in the late 1980s. Mr Gogarty claimed JMSE's financial controller, Mr Roger Copsey, told him the reason Mr Murphy was reluctant to do so was because he (Mr Murphy) was "up to his neck in the slush fund".
Most of Mr Gogarty's time in the witness box was taken up with the further unfolding of his argument with JMSE over his pension. Minutes of board meetings for 1989 appeared to indicate sharp differences between different members on this and other matters.
At one stage, two different versions of the minutes for one meeting were drawn up. One, signed by the chief executive, Mr Frank Reynolds, and another director, described Mr Gogarty's resignation as a "sad day" for someone who had done so much to build up the company.
The other, unsigned, version was more restrained. The board reluctantly accepted Mr Gogarty's resignation, but said JMSE would not be able to afford the lump sum he wanted for his pension.
It appears from a letter sent by JMSE's solicitors to Mr Gogarty in August 1989 the company was making agreement to his pension conditional on Mr Gogarty swearing an affidavit in support of Mr Murphy. This was to be used to counter an affidavit lodged by a former JMSE executive, Mr Liam Conroy, in an unfair dismissals case.
Mr Gogarty has alleged Mr Conroy accused Mr Murphy of "everything under the sun" in this document. His evidence will resume on Tuesday.