One of the two men questioned by gardaí about the death of the Donegal cattle-dealer, Mr Ritchie Barron, yesterday thanked God he had been drinking in Raphoe the night Mr Barron was killed, as otherwise "I would be in Mountjoy today".
Mr Mark McConnell, a cousin of Mr Frank McBrearty jnr, who was also treated as a suspect by the gardaí, was continuing his evidence to the Morris tribunal when it resumed after the summer break yesterday.
"If I had been home that night there would have been no witnesses. There was no phone in my house. It would have been mine and Roisín's word. God must have been looking down on us because if I hadn't been in that pub I'd be in Mountjoy today," he said.
Mr McConnell said gardaí had "an agenda" of seeking to prove he and Mr Frank McBrearty had killed Mr Barron, whose body was found, apparently after a hit-and-run accident, on a roadside outside Raphoe in the early hours of October 14th, 1996.
Before the summer recess, Mr McConnell had described a confrontation with Mr Barron in the Town and Country pub earlier that night. But he had said this was a minor incident which ended quickly.
He and his wife then went to Frankie's nightclub and afterwards to the local take-away. They heard about the accident involving Ritchie Barron, and this upset him, he said.
"What was different about it was I never in my life had a row in a pub," he said yesterday. "I'm not a violent person. I'm not a fighting person. I don't get involved in rows in pubs.
"I thought I had an argument with him, and now he's lying up the road, and the last time I saw him we had words."
He told the tribunal he and his wife then went to spend the night with friends, the Brollys, as their child was already staying there.
"There are a number of people who, if they give evidence to the tribunal and their evidence is accepted, it may lead the tribunal to conclude you did not stay at the Brollys," Mr McDermott said.
Mr McConnell said this evidence must be mistaken. He was with his wife, Roisín, or Mr Eddie Walsh after leaving the take-away, and then they went to the Brollys' house.
Mr McConnell did not agree with Mr McDermott that his wife had tried to phone the Town and Country pub from the Brollys' house at about 2.45 that morning to find out if he was there, or that he had been seen in the town alone.
He also rejected earlier evidence that he had been seen coming out of the Town and Country the following morning.
The tribunal is examining how the Barron death was investigated. These include claims that gardaí were late arriving at the scene; that they failed to preserve the scene after the discovery of the body; and their reasons for regarding two men as murder suspects and other apparent flaws in the operation.