It was Dermot Desmond's day, one of the 140 days per year he is entitled to be in Ireland as a tax exile. And he chose to spend part of it yesterday in the Gresham Hotel ballroom, at the Bord Pleanala oral hearing into the proposed Spencer Dock development, throwing everything bar the kitchen sink at the development.
Deeply-tanned and immaculately turned out, the multi-millionaire financier read a trenchant statement, fielded some barbed questions and then departed from the room, dematerialising like hyper-mobile global capital.
Mr Desmond left the matters of detail to an impressive team of consultants, led by Ms Ann Mulcrone, of planning consultants Reid Associates, and including experts on architecture (Mr Paul Keogh), economics (Mr Colm McCarthy) and transport (Mr Duncan Murray).
None of the developers behind Spencer Dock - Mr Richard Barrett and Mr Johnny Ronan, of Treasury Holdings, or Mr Harry Crosbie, the docklands entrepreneur - was present to hear Mr Desmond.
What they missed was quite a performance, even if the man who dreamed up the IFSC did wilt a little under cross-examination by Mr Tom Phillips, the developers' planning consultant. But neither Mr Desmond nor his advisers pulled any punches in their assault.
Asked by the presiding inspector, Mr Des Johnson, if he had any views on the architectural quality of the National Conference Centre, lynchpin of the Spencer Dock project, he said its cylindrical atrium was so big that Liberty Hall and the Central Bank would fit inside it. Mr Desmond said his concern was that Docklands should be developed as an attractive, high-quality, sustainable area of the city.
Spencer Dock was the key to it, but the current development proposal "fails the challenge set out in the Docklands master-plan" because of its "overwhelming bulk and density."
Mr Desmond said he was not opposed to high buildings as such, but he did not want to see a concrete jungle.
When it was put to Mr Desmond by Mr Phillips that his own Eco-sphere proposal for the Custom House Docks site - a distorted glazed pyramid 80 metres high and filled with exotic vegetation and animals - would be incongruous, he gamely defended it by showing the promotional video.
Later, in a lengthy presentation, his planning consultant, Ms Mulcrone, a former planning inspector with An Bord Pleanala, said it was clear that the Spencer Dock development would tower over the city, driven by the need to fund the loss-making conference centre.
She said the 51-acre site represented 25 per cent of the land available for development in Docklands. But despite it being in public ownership, through CIE, no provision had been made for social housing or for a strategically important rail link across the River Liffey.
The economics of the project were called into question by Mr McCarthy, who said the Government would be paying for the conference centre several times over through the £26 million grant and a rich menu of tax breaks; it would be better off building it directly.