Calm testimony by lone witness for the defence

Pat Gillane took five gulps of water from a glass held in a steady hand during his hour and five minutes in the witness box yesterday morning. After a power failure in the Circuit Criminal Court, the Gillane trial had been moved to the Special Criminal Court building in Green Street.

Pat Gillane took the stand as the only defence witness against the charge that he solicited two men to murder his wife. Sitting with his hands crossed on his stomach, he agreed he had a relationship with his wife's sister Bridie, before and during his marriage.

The first time he saw Philomena Gordon was on a Friday night at a bar. "Herself and another blondie girl" were in the bar and "she came talking to me", he said. He did not see her for three or four months after that. Then, in September 1991, they met at O'Donoghue's bar in Fanore, Co Clare. "She came to me and looked in me eyes and said `I seen you before', " Mr Gillane said. "I wrote my sister's phone number down on the back of a match box and gave it to her." He told her she could give him her number if she wanted, but she did not. They next met at a country and western night in Kiltormer, Co Galway. Philomena "came up to me and that's how it started".

Mr Gillane spoke in a calm, low voice and requested a glass of water as prosecution counsel Mr Edward Comyn suggested he "fancied Bridie more than Philomena" and Bridie had a "strong sexual hold over him".

"No, that's not true," Mr Gillane said, shaking his head and frowning. "What I did say is that this can't continue."

He agreed that he had been in Dublin in January 1994, when he is accused of soliciting the men. "I arranged with my wife," he said, pausing for a fraction before adding "God rest her" with a nod to the judge, "to pick up two plastic bags of ornaments."

He said he never drove down Thomas Street, the area where the men allege he stopped them, to get to the Galway road, but would drive down the quays.