A SENIOR executive of Joseph Murphy Structural Engineering (JMSE) said Mr Joe Murphy snr did not avail of a tax amnesty because he "was up to his neck in the slush fund", the Flood tribunal was told yesterday.
Resuming his evidence, Mr James Gogarty said at a meeting on July 6th, 1989, Mr Roger Copsey, a senior executive of JMSE, had sympathised with him in his difficulties with the Murphy group of companies.
He said following the meeting Mr Copsey said he wanted to clarify his own position "and he asked me would I go down with him to what he called his archives, down in the basement".
Mr Gogarty said Mr Copsey recalled that Mr John Lane and Mr Gogarty had tried to persuade Mr Joe Murphy snr to take the tax amnesty of 1988. "And he said `I have to tell you that my reluctance to do that was that Murphy snr was up to his neck in the slush fund thing'. " Mr Gogarty claimed Mr Copsey showed him supporting documentation in the archives. "I just looked at them and I accepted his word that that was the reason."
He said he had resigned his directorships of the Murphy group of companies around that time but remained as an executive because the question of the 1988 accounts was not finalised and he had not reached agreement about his pension.
Mr Gogarty said he was refusing to sign the accounts because they "were wrong" and he commented: "It is my recollection that Gay Grehan, give him his due, stuck his neck out and risked his position to criticise Murphy's and Copsey's conduct in trying to force me to sign accounts which they all knew were wrong."
However, Mr Garrett Cooney SC, for the Murphy group, said Mr Gogarty was displaying a classic example of what Mr Cooney and his clients had been objecting to: "This witness is given a document and instead of the document being opened, he sees it as an opportunity to make the most derogatory remarks about my client. Now we have here and he has in his hand the minutes of the board meeting of July 27th and this records in a factual and accurate manner what actually occurred on that day."
Mr Gogarty then started to read the minutes of the meeting. But when he got to a point where it was mentioned that Mr Copsey had sought legal advice on the accounts, Mr Gogarty said: "Copsey had his own reservations, the blackguard, and he was kicking it back to me, oh my God."
Reading the details of a severance package for Mr Marcus Sweeney, Mr Gogarty itemised a £60,000 payment, a £40,000 payment to Mr Sweeney's pension fund, a Saab Turbo valued at £12,000 and £20,000 paid against legal fees and other expenses and £6,000 of a loan to be forgiven.
Mr Gogarty again became upset at this point, commenting, "they couldn't pay my legal fees". When the agenda reached his own resignation, Mr Gogarty's voice broke as he read out "Gay Grehan and Frank Reynolds suggested that it was a very sad day to see Mr Gogarty end his days with the company after all he did in building up and securing the companies".
He said Mr Grehan and Mr Reynolds had expressed the hope that his pension would not be affected by his resignation. But he claimed that following the meeting at which he resigned, further matters over his signing an affidavit were raised before his pension details were sorted out.
The affidavit was in response to a case being taken against the Murphy group by a former chief executive, Mr Liam Conroy.