A little matter of biscuits, tea and £80,000

Mr Raphael Burke, then minister for industry, commerce and communications and in the middle of an election campaign, was "formally dressed, short of being in a dress suit", when he received the three gentlemen at his door one June evening in 1989.

He ushered them into a side-room off the hall and went to get some tea and biscuits. On his return, Mr James Gogarty placed an envelope on the table. Mr Michael Bailey placed a second envelope on the table.

There was some small talk, and Mr Burke looked at his watch. It was time to go. The visitors stood up, shook hands and wished the politician luck. Mr Gogarty never saw the envelopes, or Mr Burke, again.

This version of the meeting, related by Mr Gogarty at the tribunal yesterday, will be contested in the days to come, but for the moment it stands as the only comprehensive account of an encounter which ruined Mr Burke's career. And, if the devil is in the detail, Mr Gogarty was in wicked mood yesterday.

"I checked the envelope, it was bundles of £100 notes and £50 notes, and I'm not saying I checked the whole lot of them, but I checked through them to give myself reasonable satisfaction that there was £30,000 in cash." A £10,000 cheque was made out to cash and added to the envelope.

Mr Gogarty said he assumed there was £40,000 in Mr Bailey's envelope, too. He didn't know for sure - "There could be feathers in it for all I know".

Even Mr Bailey, sitting in the tribunal hall between his brother, Thomas, and his public relations adviser, Mr Pat Heneghan, laughed at that one.

But Mr Gogarty said it was a logical assumption that followed the agreement Joseph Murphy Structural Engineering and Mr Bailey had made about "procuring" re-zonings for their lands. For a price of £2,000 an acre, he said, Mr Bailey was offering to procure majority votes on Dublin County Council. This would be done through the help of politicians who could be "influenced" by Mr Burke.

On the way to the meeting with Mr Burke, Mr Gogarty had suggested that they should look for a receipt for the large amount of money they were handing over. "Will we fuck!" responded Mr Bailey, the witness told the tribunal.

At the meeting, Mr Gogarty expressed concern at the substantial payment being made for an "open-ended commitment". Mr Burke said Mr Joseph Murphy and Mr Bailey were "well aware of how he had honoured his commitments in the past".

"That's all right, Jim, leave it with me and Ray", Mr Bailey is supposed to have said.

Mr Gogarty related the episode with his hand on his brow, his body slumped forward in the witness box. He paused at times to sip water, inhale deeply or relieve cramp, but he never relented in his onslaught on his former employer, JMSE, Mr Bailey or Mr Burke.

Insisting that he didn't give a damn one way or another about the lands, he saved his strongest words for JMSE's lawyer, Mr Garrett Cooney, who accused him of conducting a propaganda exercise. "He's objecting all over the place. He's objecting to the truth coming out. He knows what's in it - dynamite.

"I'll go to my grave before they get away with it", an exhausted witness declared.