THE dispute at the Flood tribunal which resulted in the sensational withdrawal of the Joseph Murphy Structural Engineering lawyers was resolved yesterday and their cross-examination of Mr James Gogarty will resume on Tuesday.
The fresh move came yesterday morning when Mr Garrett Cooney SC, who had been ordered to withdraw on Thursday by the chairman, arrived with the two other senior counsel and the rest of the legal team, to make a statement to Mr Justice Flood.
Mr Cooney, who had clashed with the chairman over remarks he made, stood as the tribunal resumed and said he was grateful to the chairman for his permission, conveyed to him by counsel for the tribunal, to make a short statement in relation to the issue which arose and which led to the chairman making an order that he may no longer represent his client before the tribunal.
"I accept without reservation that your motivation and objective in this, as in all other matters with which you have had to deal in this tribunal, was the efficient and just discharge of the onerous task imposed upon you by both Houses of the Oireachtas and to preserve the dignity of the tribunal," he said.
"I have never suggested nor inferred that you, the sole member of the tribunal, have been biased in carrying out your functions and it is a matter of regret to me that you thought to the contrary.
"For my part, Mr Chairman, my only motivation and objective in anything I have said was and is to discharge the paramount duty of representing my clients to the best of my ability and experience.
"It is indeed regrettable that these separate objectives should have clashed so directly and in so doing caused you personal offence. That was not my intention and I wish to reiterate the fact of the high respect in which I have held you and in which I will continue to hold you both as a former colleague at the Bar and latterly as a distinguished judge of the High Court. That respect remains undiminished.
"In these circumstances, Mr Chairman, I respectfully ask that you graciously put this incident behind us and allow me to continue to represent my clients' interests," Mr Cooney said.
The chairman thanked Mr Cooney. He said he should like to say at the outset that the tribunal was grateful to Mr Cooney for the honourable and professional manner in which he had clarified his position to the tribunal.
"I should secondly make clear that I do accept that at all times the motivation behind Mr Cooney's conduct in this tribunal has been to represent his clients' interests properly and with integrity."