He might not have much light to shed on the investigation, he might sound like a character out of a John B. Keane play, but 82-year-old Batt O'Shea is delivering some of the funniest one-liners the tribunal has yet heard.
In one answer, he found the measure of Mr George Redmond. Asked whether he had ever given money to the former assistant Dublin city and county manager, he replied in a south Kerry lilt: "I gave him £200 one time to buy golf balls. If his ball went into the rough, he'd spend the day looking for it. It was like 'twas gold to him."
It summed up Mr Redmond to a tee. George, who walked around with a £50,000 cheque in his pocket for six months until it expired, drove a 12-year-old car, and didn't buy newspapers but read the front pages in the filling station. Now tribunal "lifers" are doomed to dream forever about George and his golden golf balls.
Yesterday's evidence ambled to no great purpose through Mr O'Shea's long career as a builder and the various splits and rows he had with others, particularly his former school-friend from Caherciveen, Mr Joseph Murphy snr. The culture clash between the rough-hewn Irish builders and the Englishmen-in-suits surrounding Mr Murphy produced much hilarity.
At one meeting, Mr Murphy's team walked out after Mr O'Shea's accountant complained "the tall men" couldn't stop talking. "You pick like a canary and shite like an elephant," Mr O'Shea recalled Mr Murphy saying.
"Joe, but you're a culchie still," he chuckled to himself some time later.
Determined to enjoy his short spell in the limelight, Mr O'Shea cut loose in every direction. Of Mr Liam Conroy, the former chief executive of Mr Murphy's business empire, he remarked: "'Twas him that was chasing me around, buying me drink and all that caper. He knew I was buying land for Joe Murphy and he wanted to get in with Murphy."
As Mr Justice Flood remarked at one stage, Mr O'Shea, despite his age, his diabetes and his memory lapses, was "nobody's fool". For many years Mr O'Shea was Mr Murphy's representative in Ireland. He bought lands on behalf of the millionaire tax exile, and his company, O'Shea and Shanahan, built houses on licence on these lands. Mr Murphy had a one-third stake in O'Shea and Shanahan, but seemed to make all the decisions that mattered.
By the 1970s, Mr Gogarty, appointed by Mr Murphy as managing director of his Irish companies, was moving in. Effectively, he usurped Mr O'Shea as Mr Murphy's right-hand man in Ireland, even though it was Mr O'Shea who had introduced him to Mr Murphy.
"Talk to Gogarty! You might as well talk to a jackass," remarked the witness at one stage. He apologised after a break to test his diabetes: "Apart from anything, he's a very smart man." He was apologising to the chairman again shortly afterwards, after he started swearing. "Sorry for using that language, it is the only language I know."
By 1978, the falling-out between Mr Murphy and Mr O'Shea was apparent. Mr Gogarty got "awkward" - and Mr Murphy got scarce. Mr O'Shea even tipped off the barman in the Shelbourne to tell him when Mr Murphy was on one of his intermittent visits to Ireland. He didn't get much out of Mr Murphy, but it was one of several occasions when Mr O'Shea recalled getting "half jarred" with his former associate. If Mr O'Shea's evidence has any relevance, it relates to his role as a middleman between different parties. Did Mr Redmond know Mr Murphy? Did he introduce Mr Gogarty to Mr Redmond, as the latter has claimed? The answers to these questions aren't yet clear. We did learn, however, that Mr Murphy and Mr Ray Burke both visited the Harp Inn, a pub in Swords which was owned by O'Shea and Shanahan, although the witness said the two men did not know each other.
Mr Redmond, he thought, did not take a drink.