The developer Mr Michael Bailey has now provided three conflicting versions of the meeting at which money was paid to Mr Ray Burke, as well as contradictory accounts of the other main episodes in which he is involved.
Depending on when you talked to Mr Bailey, he was either not there at the meeting in Mr Burke's house in 1989, in the house but not present when the money was paid over, or in the same room and a witness to Mr Gogarty's payment.
This took the form of a package, an envelope or two envelopes, depending on when you talked to Mr Bailey. As for the £50,000 cheque he gave to Mr Gogarty in November 1989, this was either for assistance in trying to buy a house or a finder's fee for buying the Murphy lands in north Dublin, again depending on when you intercepted Mr Bailey.
Asked why he told a journalist a series of lies, his various responses yesterday were that he didn't know, he had no idea, or that he simply chose to do so.
Mr Bailey's evidence stands as a vindication of Frank Connolly, the Sunday Business Post journalist who broke the story of the Gogarty allegations in 1997. Mr Connolly went to Mr Bailey for his side of the story and at first met with a straight denial that there was any meeting in Mr Burke's house in 1989.
"Yes, I did deny it," he admitted. Asked why, he replied: "Because I chose to deny it at the time."
Mr Bailey described Mr Gogarty as "a vexed individual with a gripe", but said some of his complaints were justified, according to Mr Connolly's statement.
Mr Connolly says Mr Bailey read extracts from the famous letter of June 8th, 1989, on the phone to show his purchase of the Murphy lands was a normal commercial deal, but refused to give him a hard copy. Mr Bailey said yesterday he couldn't recall this. He didn't have the letter, so he couldn't have done this.
The witness admitted that his later claim to Mr Connolly that he was in Mr Burke's house but did not witness the payment was inaccurate. He told the journalist that Mr Burke received "a package stuffed with cash". This detail appears as "an envelope" in his statement filed last January and "two envelopes" in his evidence this week.
Asked by Mr Des O'Neill SC, for the tribunal, whether he was trying to "mislead Mr Connolly or send him off on a wild goose chase", Mr Bailey said he didn't know.
When Mr Connolly asked in 1997 why he gave Mr Gogarty a cheque for £50,000 in November 1989, Mr Bailey said it was for his assistance in trying to buy a Murphy-owned building in Baggot Street, Dublin. Yesterday he admitted this was a lie.
When Mr Connolly discovered that the house was actually sold in late 1989, when the cheque was dated September 1990, he went back to Mr Bailey and was told that the cheque was post-dated. It was indeed post-dated, but Mr Bailey agreed yesterday that it was "totally false" to link this to the Baggot Street property.
Mr Bailey's version now is that he paid Mr Gogarty a "finder's fee" of £150,000 cash, plus interest, for his assistance in negotiating the sale of the Murphy lands in north Dublin. He paid Mr Gogarty £50,000 in cash and provided two £50,000 cheques as security until the rest of the cash was paid.
He saw nothing unusual in the payment. It was paid in amounts varying between £1,000 and £20,000 over the next six years.
Mr Gogarty denies the allegation, and says he was given the £50,000 cheque to buy his silence on the Burke payment.
He told Mr O'Neill that the payments, totalling £162,000, would be recorded in his company accounts. His accountant was located, but arrived in the afternoon with the wrong years' accounts. He is due to give further evidence this morning.
There are no records, receipts or acknowledgments for this deal. Mr Bailey happily agreed to pay £150,000 before the land sale was even completed.
Only a year before, he had accused Mr Gogarty of "gazumping" and now he was happy to rely on Mr Gogarty's record of how much money he had paid and how much was still due. "One day I gave him £1,000 and he came back to me on the phone and told me I was £20 short."
Mr Bailey was originally due to pay all £150,000 in cash, but Mr Gogarty agreed to accept payment in stages when Mr Bailey said he couldn't afford to pay all the money up-front.
In the afternoon, he contradicted the evidence of his bank manager when he said he asked the Anglo-Irish Bank in November 1989 for £150,000 for a finder's fee for Mr Gogarty.
Then he agreed that the reason he didn't pay the total amount in cash was because he didn't want to, and not because he wasn't able to get the money. He later agreed that his bank manager was correct when he said in evidence that Mr Bailey had asked for £50,000 only.
Mr Bailey said he believed that £50,000 of the fee was recorded in the accounts. But he admitted he didn't know how the remaining £112,500 was recorded.
There were further contradictions in Mr Bailey's account of his meeting with Mr Burke in June 1997, at the time newspaper articles about the payment began to appear. It was a Sunday, the morning of the Derby, and the day before Mr Burke was appointed to Cabinet.
In his evidence, Mr Bailey said he was asked "What's this guy Gogarty up to?" He filled in the background, about how Mr Gogarty was "demented and vexatious" about the Murphys, with whom he was in dispute.
Mr Bailey was adamant he wasn't asked to give an account of the 1989 meeting, as Mr Burke claimed in evidence a few weeks ago. The meeting wasn't discussed at all, he said, contrary to what Mr Burke claimed.
Mr Bailey was positive Mr Burke did not refer to his meeting with the Taoiseach on the matter, nor could he recall Mr Burke informing him that Mr Gogarty had been given immunity by the Garda. This was Mr Burke's evidence to the tribunal.