No motive for bribe as land sold - counsel

All except nine acres of the Murphy group's "land-bank" in north Co Dublin was sold in 1989 for agricultural values, Mr Garrett Cooney SC, for the Murphy group, told the tribunal yesterday.

The sale price meant the Murphy family were without a motive for paying a bribe to secure planning on the land, he maintained.

Earlier, Mr James Gogarty, the tribunal's chief witness, had said Mr Joe Murphy snr thought an Isle of Man case he was defending would reveal financial details leading to complications with the Republic's Revenue Commissioners. So Mr Murphy snr had overruled his son's attempts to have the lands rezoned, in favour of a move to get the cash out of the State as quickly as possible, Mr Gogarty contended.

Mr Cooney recalled that Mr Gogarty had said Mr Murphy snr had "panicked on July 3rd 1989 and directed that the sale of the land should proceed at agricultural prices". Mr Gogarty agreed he said that.

"And you say that the panic arose out of the proceedings which Mr Conroy, a former managing director of JMSE, had launched in the Isle of Man," continued Mr Cooney. Mr Gogarty again agreed.

Mr Cooney said that in the Isle of Man action, "Mr Murphy had won an important preliminary legal point which effectively stopped the Conroy proceedings in their tracks", on June 28th, 1989, before the Irish lands were sold.

Mr Cooney insisted that by July 3rd, 1989, Mr Murphy "did not have any cause to worry". He said Mr Gogarty's evidence was "untrue and another invention" as well as "carefully constructed in order to justify your account".

Mr Gogarty said this was not the case. To the suggestion that Mr Murphy had emerged unscathed from the Isle of Man case, Mr Gogarty responded, "extraordinary".