On the face of it, Mr Tom Bailey's business career provides the perfect illustration of a rags-to-riches story: poor boy makes good through hard work and comes into fabulous riches.
Here was a simple bricklayer from Co Roscommon who left school after the Inter Cert, and toiled long hours on the houses his brother Michael had started building in Dublin. The brothers set up a joint company and, typically for an Irish family company, Tom's wife Caroline came in to do the book-keeping.
Today, Tom and Caroline live in a fine house situated on 150 acres of rolling land in Co Meath. In his new life, Tom has taken up gentlemanly pursuits such as sheep-breeding and cattle-rearing.
From the witness-box, Tom proudly told the tribunal yesterday how he'd once spent £94,000 on a pure-bred Suffolk sheep, and paid 10,000 guineas for a stock ram. Using money withdrawn from the company of which he was a director, he also paid £58,000 for a lot of 16 sheep.
Vast amounts of money seem to flow freely through the brothers' fingers. In later evidence, Mr Bailey related how the brothers paid a £600,000 deposit on land they were buying at Mountgorry, Swords. When they failed to get planning permission, the money was forfeited.
On another occasion, he alleged they gave Mr James Gogarty £162,000 as a finder's fee for the Murphy lands in north Dublin, without ever asking for a receipt they could write off against tax.
The problem for all of us was that this wealth and high spending was at least partly based on tax evasion. This week we've learned that at least £100,000 in cheques was kept out of the accounts, as well as £94,000 in under-the-counter payments which were listed in a small notebook, the "pussy book", in 1990. The money allegedly paid to Mr Gogarty was also kept off the books.
Both Tom and Caroline Bailey acknowledged there may be more such "pussy books" for other years, containing more details of illicit payments. These have not been found, and probably never will be.
Compared to the elaborate international scams we've learned about in other forums, this may seem like small beer. It's certainly hard to shock or surprise a public that has grown cynical about the tax practices of the rich.
The Baileys' advisers would have us feel sorry for their clients. Sure, weren't they only paying Christmas bonuses to their staff, etc. Yet the fact is that most of the money that was hidden from the eyes of the Revenue Commissioners went not to needy employees, but to the directors of Bovale Developments, Michael and Tom Bailey, themselves.
We shouldn't forget just how poor the Ireland of the late 1980s and early 1990s was. The public purse was empty. The health services were in crisis, classrooms were overflowing, unemployment was the highest in Europe. And amid all this people like Tom and Michael Bailey weren't paying their fair share of tax.
Mr Bailey admitted yesterday he failed to tell his accountant about £100,000 in cheques that were written to pay for his sheep-rearing hobby. "I don't believe he asked me about them," he said by way of explanation.
If he was tiling a bathroom in a house, he might award himself an extra £100 in cash. If he was doing an extension, this extra income might jump to £10,000 or £15,000.
Mr Colm Allen SC, for the Baileys, protested on a few occasions that the tribunal was "trawling" through his clients' accounts. It was conducting a "quasi public revenue audit".
In the witness-box, Mr Bailey faithfully restated the now-familiar allegations about a payoff to Mr Gogarty in return for his help in acquiring the Murphy-owned lands in north Dublin. However, he wasn't able to explain why the Baileys, as the purchasers, were paying an agent's fee to Mr Gogarty, when the normal practice is for the vendors to pay.
On his last visit to the stand, Mr Bailey was roasted by Mr Gogarty's counsel. Yesterday, he was more assured and there were no major contradictions with his brother's evidence. Only occasionally did he make a minor slip, as when he was asked if he had any records of other payments to Mr Gogarty. "Not a written record," he replied.
The last of the major witnesses in the Gogarty strand of the inquiry, Mr Joseph Murphy jnr, is scheduled as the next witness.