Mr George Redmond's ability to conjure huge amounts of wealth out of almost nothing has been revealed in detail, but it is clearly only the tip of an extremely large iceberg.
For an ordinary bureaucrat on a modest annual salary - take-home pay about £19,000 - the former assistant Dublin city and county manager had a knack for investing that George Soros would be proud of. In 1988 Mr Redmond's investments were worth £660,000, or almost 35 times his yearly wage.
In the same year he lodged £171,000, after interest and inter-account lodgements were deducted, to his accounts. It was easily more than the £150,000 he earned in the decade spent as de facto Dublin county manager, between 1980 and 1989.
These were just a few of a dizzying series of figures revealed by the tribunal lawyer, Mr Pat Hanratty, as he outlined just how much Mr Justice Flood and his team know about Mr Redmond's financial affairs.
But the big question, put time and time again by Mr Hanratty to Mr Redmond, was: where did this money come from? Mr James Gogarty has alleged the Murphy Group made two separate payments to Mr Redmond in the late 1980s, but so much money was sloshing around in Mr Redmond's accounts during this period that the tribunal lawyers have had difficulty identifying these payments individually.
As for the witness himself, a complete blank. Mr Redmond couldn't remember anything yesterday. He said he needed time to examine the tribunal's analysis of his accounts, but Mr Hanratty pointed out that he'd been given these documents months ago.
He said he'd made a full disclosure of his accounts to the tribunal. Mr Hanratty reminded him that he'd only declared eight of his 33 accounts.
He said he was a "heavy saver". Interest rates were high at the time, and the offshore money more than doubled "without doing anything". As for records: "I was a great discarder. I just tore things up."
Mr Redmond lodged a further £95,000 in new money in 1989, the year he retired. He attributed this figure to savings and accretions over the year.
There were single lodgements of £33,000 in June 1988 and £68,000 in November 1989, but he couldn't remember any of the details.
Mr Hanratty produced a schedule of account balances kept by Mr Redmond for 1988. This included a balance of £92,000 with Credit Finance, £176,000 in unit investments, £139,000 in the Isle of Man accounts, and £101,000 in the garden "shed", although Mr Redmond thinks the final word was "Shield", an investment company.
Four further balances, for amounts of up to £104,000, remain a mystery to the tribunal, and Mr Redmond was unable to throw any further light on them.
Mr Hanratty listed accounts maintained by Mr Redmond in the Ulster Bank in Cloghran, AIB in O'Connell Street, and ACC and EBS in Blanchardstown. These were the only accounts listed in Mr Redmond's original discovery. He later admitted to having money in the Isle of Man.
Mr Justice Flood suggested that if the witness really wanted to co-operate with the tribunal, he would provide it with a copy of the five statements he made to the Criminal Assets Bureau, which is conducting a separate investigation into his affairs. Mr Anthony Harris, solicitor for Mr Redmond, said he would discuss this with his client.
Before lunch, Mr Redmond was questioned on Mr Gogarty's allegation that the official was paid £15,000 as his "cut" for planning advice given about the Murphy-owned lands at Forest Road, Swords.
The witness maintains he was given the money as a "finder's fee" for introducing Mr Gogarty to the eventual buyer, Mr Michael Bailey.
But as Mr Hanratty pointed out, Mr Gogarty and Mr Bailey already knew each other and Mr Bailey already knew about the lands.
So why was Mr Redmond going to such trouble?
"I was doing Mr Gogarty a favour. There was nothing more than that," he replied.
According to the witness, it was a bright spring or summer evening when Mr Gogarty met Mr Redmond in Clontarf Castle and handed him an envelope containing £5,000 with the words "This is for you, George". Apart from that, he could remember nothing about the envelope and what it contained.
Mr Redmond's efforts to put water between himself and the allegations made by Mr Gogarty led him to adopt some strange positions. Most bizarrely, the tribunal heard him argue that the service charges levied by the county council on developers were illegal.
The witness said it was "absolutely, totally and irresponsibly wrong" to suggest, as Mr Gogarty has, that his advice to the Murphy Group regarding their lands at Forest Road had saved the company more than £100,000 in planning levies.
Mr Redmond said he had "no hand, act or part" in the final decision by the council to accept the deal offered by Murphys, which was outlined in a letter drafted on Mr Redmond's advice.
Weeks before the planning permission on the lands was due to wither, the company offered to pay the levy due back in 1983, provided no further levies were imposed and the council agreed to build roads and drainage.
Everyone but Mr Redmond believes this saved Murphys the difference between the 1983 levy and the much higher levy that would have been imposed five years later.
However, the witness maintained that the charges were "totally unlawful" and if he told Mr Gogarty this, Murphys would have ended up paying "very little".
Later, Mr Redmond said he would be asking the minister for local government for an "extraordinary audit" to show there had been no loss to public funds from his advice.