Joseph Murphy, who died at his home in Guernsey on August 2nd aged 83, after a prolonged battle with cancer, was a household name for thousands of Irish emigrants in Britain, long before the Flood tribunal was set up in November 1997 by the Oireachtas to investigate "certain planning matters and payments". Born in Cahirciveen, Co Kerry, in 1917, he and his older brother, John, are listed separately in a league table compiled by the trade magazine, Construction News last month as the owners of the 10 richest Irish building companies in the UK - which between them are said to be worth 10 per cent of the 10 billion pound in revenues generated annually by construction and civil engineering firms in Britain.
Joe Murphy's company, JMCC Holdings, is worth £36 million pounds sterling, according to the league table.
He attended the local national school at Knockeen and went on to become a garda - as did his contemporary, Jim Gogarty, the man who was later to play such a dramatic role in shaping the Murphy group's history.
By 1945, however, the ambitious young Kerryman decided it was time to join his brother in England where it was clear that there were rich pickings to be made in the post-war reconstruction.
A somewhat anomalous situation now developed in that he was obliged to change his original Christian name from John to Joseph - because his older brother had adopted the former, for his own reasons, when first setting foot in England. Hard labouring work for real profit became the formula that drove the two Murphy brothers in those early days. They soon set up as fledgling sub-contractors: one of their first jobs was the removal of shipping barriers in the English Channel between Dover and Calais.
The sub-contracting business expanded quickly and they went on to become big employers in their own right. They decided to go their separate ways in the late 1950s, however, when Joe Murphy set up a company that specialised in cable-laying.
These were the halcyon days of Irish-led post-war reconstruction in Britain with Joe Murphy's star - and fortunes - rising. He was a frequent visitor to the Irish Club in London's fashionable Eaton Square where he liked nothing more than to hear and share industry news and gossip.
At this level, the club served as a sophisticated exchange (in the market sense) as well as doubling as a cultural centre; it became a discreet haven from the job for the Kerryman, who always valued his privacy. Joe Murphy possessed a number of personal qualities that those close to him in business came to appreciate and admire. As an employer he had a reputation for paying well - and he was liked and respected for this.
He did not encourage shirkers, but he was ready to pay the price for a job well done. The actor, Joe Lynch, who knew him well in those days, testified to this on an RTE Liveline programme last year and insisted that he had employed more of his countrymen than any company in Ireland. This is readily appreciated, given employment levels in Ireland in the 1960s and 1970s - despite the "rising tide" that was gradually to change the shape of the Irish economy at home and before the international oil crises that were to foment spiralling inflation and recession at the start of the 1980s.
Lynch also spoke of his quiet philanthropy - and gave several examples of his personal generosity to individuals and causes close to his heart.
Joe Murphy's life was not without trauma, despite his successes, however. His first wife died in 1962, leaving him with two young children - Joe jnr was only three months old.
He re-married, Una, her sister, in 1968 who became a mother to the children, Joe and Angela. In the late 1960s he and his brother, John, were persuaded by financial advisers to invest their money in IFTC, an Isle of Man-based bank.
They lost millions when the bank collapsed - although Joe Murphy fared worse because he was more exposed than his brother.
It was a time of real personal crisis. Ultimately, up to 80 per cent of the losses came to be recovered, Roger Copsey - then a young chartered accountant - one of the financial advisers concerned, told the Flood tribunal, when giving evidence. Although Joe Murphy snr never appeared before the tribunal set up inter alia to investigate allegations against his group's Irish subsidiary, JMSE, of bribing a senior politician, and - for reasons of ill health - was interviewed in Guernsey by a commission led by Mr Justice Flood, the testimony of a number of witnesses in Dublin Castle portrayed him as a truly remarkable individual: an able businessman, certainly, and a fierce fighter when it came to protecting his family interests, but also a man not given to acting on impulse - capable of taking the long view.
One example is worth recalling: Roger Copsey, the English accountant who described himself to the tribunal as Joe Murphy's "eyes and ears in Ireland" for many years, recalled how he had received a phone call from him on August 14th 1990 and told in effect that he was fired as financial director.
The Kerryman told Copsey he would have to "resign" because Jim Gogarty "found himself unable to work with me" - and this despite the deep personal animosities that had developed between the two retired septuagenarians over Gogarty's pension demands and allied matters.
Copsey asked Joe Murphy whether he was dissatisfied with his work. "Absolutely not," was the reply, "but I need Jim Gogarty on the Sizewell (nuclear installation) contract."
In contracts of this kind large profits were made from the "extras" that accrued, over and above the contract price. It was Gogarty's task to negotiate these extras "worth millions and millions" on the Sizewell contract.
Joe Murphy always insisted that he knew nothing about - and never authorised - the controversial payment of £30,000 to Ray Burke TD by JMSE, which the tribunal is investigating.
In a less-than-brave new world of the new millennium his name is synonymous with the Flood inquiry. For the families of thousands of grateful former emigrants, his name is synonymous with the past. His wife, Una, died in 1991. He is survived by his two children, Angela and Joseph.
Joseph (Joe) Murphy snr: born 1917; died, August 2000