`Cruellest lie' was of meeting at funeral, Cooney says

"Of all the malicious lies you have told about the Murphy family in the last 26 days, this is the cruellest and the most stupid," were the final words of Mr Garrett Cooney SC to Mr James Gogarty, as Mr Cooney's cross-examination ended yesterday.

Mr Cooney had been seeking details of a conversation Mr Gogarty says he had with Mr Joe Murphy snr at the funeral of Mr Murphy's wife, Una, in January 1991.

During his direct evidence Mr Gogarty had claimed that Mr Murphy had asked, "any chance of getting the £40,000 back?" The reference related to the money allegedly paid to Mr Ray Burke, and Mr Gogarty contended the remark was made at the funeral.

Mr Cooney said Mrs Murphy had died in Dublin after a prolonged and serious illness and her removal was to the University Church in St Stephen's Green.

Mr Murphy, he said, was standing a few feet away from the coffin "which bore the remains of the woman to whom he had been married for 20 years and who had died some hours beforehand. . .isn't that right?" Mr Gogarty agreed.

"And you say that when you went up to sympathise with him, with your wife, and to shake hands with him, and his son and his daughter were standing beside him, he mentioned a sum of £40,000; is that what you are saying?" Mr Gogarty replied he had not said that. "I said after he came out and was outside the building, the church, I spoke to him."

Mr Cooney said "the evidence of Mr Joe Murphy jnr will certainly be that he remembers you being there because this was in the midst of the litigation about the P60 form. He says that you and your wife came up the centre of the church with the rest of the mourners, and shook hands with the bereaved as they stood there beside the coffin bearing the remains of Mrs Una Murphy".

It was clear, he said, that Mr Gogarty was now "backing off in characteristic fashion in order to dilute, as it were the horror of this piece of evidence. . .and that you are now placing the meeting outside the church, and not in the immediate proximity of Mrs Murphy's coffin, to make it more credible." Mr Gogarty said: "I don't accept that at all".