The tribunal's chief witness, Mr James Gogarty, kept up his robust defence of his previous evidence yesterday with the advice to the cross-examining solicitor, Mr Anthony Harris, that he check his facts.
During his cross-examination, Mr Harris put it to Mr Gogarty that in June 1988 he and Mr Murphy snr had been planning to overthrow the then Murphy group chief executive, Mr Liam Conroy.
Mr Gogarty replied that Mr Murphy had been trying to recover property which he himself had built up over 50 years. Referring to the sequence of events, he said: "It was that crowd. They called what they called shareholders' meetings to remove me from my directorships and they had already injuncted Senior or threatened to injunct him and the whole bloody lot. It's all there," he said indicating tribunal files. "Sure read The Irish Times."
On another occasion he said to Mr Harris: "You'd want to have a chat with Charlie Bird, too, y'know."
When Mr Harris later asked: "Is the scenario I have painted the correct one?", Mr Gogarty indicated a woman television sketch artist. "The scenario now, I watched you paint it. There is a girl, she'll paint it for you."
When Mr Harris ignored Mr Gogarty's repeated insults and confined himself to waiting for Mr Gogarty to finish, Mr Gogarty remarked: "I can turn to the paragraph without you making gestures you know. I have you copped on, you know."
Mr Gogarty also accused Mr Harris of telling a lie. "No, that is a lie now," he said in response to questioning. "Please, I am sorry I am using the word lie to another solicitor but that's wrong."
During a cross-examination on sewage pipe capacity, Mr Gogarty said: "It is full of the stuff we are going through here anyway."
Mr Gogarty said the capacity of waste services could be based on "how many baths you or I will have, and they will say the poor man down in Gardiner Street has to have the same number of baths but you will find he doesn't. He can't afford any more baths".
Ultimately, Mr Gogarty himself appeared perplexed on the subject, commenting: "Jesus Christ, I am more confused than yourself."
