MR John Furze, the former Cayman Islands banker who is linked to the £1.3 million allegedly paid by Mr Ben Dunne to Mr Charles Haughey, is opposing the application from the McCracken tribunal that he should be compelled to give evidence.

A judge of the Grand Court of the Cayman Islands has reserved his decision on whether he should direct that a number of bankers and a Cayman Islands bank give evidence about the Dunnes payments.

According to one source, a decision is unlikely for a week at the earliest.

Mr Furze is the only party involved who is opposing the application. He is arguing that the McCracken tribunal is not a proper tribunal for the purposes of Caymanian law and that it is not involved in a civil action in Dublin. He is arguing that it is an investigatory body and that it is not engaged in adjudicating on fact.

Mr Furze is now retired from banking and runs a company called International Insurance Management Corporation in the Caymans.

A decision by the Grand Court to grant a Peruvian tribunal an application similar to the one from the McCracken tribunal was overturned on appeal in 1995. However, in that case the tribunal, which was investigating the awarding of public contracts worth huge amounts of money, was made up of politicians.

It is thought that the fact that the McCracken tribunal is headed by a High Court judge may increase its chances of success.

The other parties from whom evidence is being sought are the Caymans bank Ansbacher Ltd and seven people connected with the bank - Mr John Collins; Mr Hugh Harte; Mr Michael Day; Mr Kevin Glidden; Ms Maxine Everson; and Mr Brian Bothwell - as well as the auditors, KPMG. Mr Bothwell is the managing director of the bank.

Mr Collins, who is a director of Anbacher, along with Mr Furze and the late Mr Des Traynor, was one of the signatories to an Ansbacher account in a Dublin bank, Irish International Bank, into which £210,000 in bank drafts was paid which Mr Ben Dunne has told the tribunal he gave to Mr Haughey.

A further four payments totalling £1.1 million, which Mr Dunne said he gave Mr Haughey, came to be lodged in an Ansbacher account in Guinness & Mahon Dublin. Mr Furze was managing director of Ansbacher at the time.

Two of these payments were cheques made out to John Furze. Last December Mr Furze told The Irish Times that he never met Mr Duane and would not know him "if I tripped over him". He said he had no links with Fianna Fail. At the time of the interview, Mr Haughey had not been named as the alleged recipient of the Ben Dunne payments.

Mr Furze and his former partner Mr John Collins set up a Guinness & Mahon bank in the Cayman Islands with the accountant, Mr Des Traynor, in 1973. The bank subsequently became Ansbacher Ltd.

He said he first met Mr Traynor when the latter was working with the accountancy firm Haughey Boland in 1969. He would not say under what circumstances. He attended Mr Traynor's funeral in Ireland in 1994.

Mr Furze said that, to his knowledge, no money had ever passed through his bank accounts destined for a Fianna Fail politician.

Mr Dunne told the tribunal that it was following requests originating from Mr Traynor that he made the payments intended for Mr Haughey.

It has also emerged that the Caymans application is at an earlier stage than had previously been reported. The Caymans judge who has reserved his judgement, Mr Justice Patterson, is considering the tribunal's application for an order compelling witnesses.

It is only after that decision is made, if it is not appealed, and if the decision is in the tribunal's favour, that a mechanism outlined in the Cayman Confidential Relationships (Preservation) Law will come into play.

Under this law the bank and the individuals concerned must apply to the Grand Court for direction as to whether they should comply with the order, given the strict conditions for the disclosure of confidential information laid out in the law.

The Cayman Islands attorney general must be given 7 days notice of any such application and he may appear amicus curiae or as a friend of the court in any hearing. The parties concerned may also be heard or he represented at the hearing.

Mr McCracken, in his interim report, said he was hopeful that evidence could be heard in the Cayman Islands in the first week of June.