The former lobbyist, Mr Frank Dunlop, yesterday denied at the Flood tribunal that he had forged his diary.
He claimed that on the day he paid the former Fine Gael senator, Mr Liam Cosgrave, £5,000 to secure a vote on a planning motion, he also made payments to other politicians.
Mr Dunlop said he paid £12,000 altogether, including the sum to Mr Cosgrave, on November 11th, 1992, and entries in his diary showed the appointments.
He was being cross-examined by Mr Michael O'Higgins SC, for Mr Cosgrave, about the meeting Mr Dunlop claimed he had with Mr Cosgrave in Newtownpark Avenue, south Co Dublin, when he gave him the money.
Mr Cosgrave denies the meeting took place.
Mr O'Higgins asked about Mr Dunlop's account of the meeting as being "prior to a funeral". He said that previously tribunal counsel, Mr John Gallagher SC, had said there was no funeral at the church there on that day.
"When you were told by Mr Gallagher that there was no funeral, you air-brushed the funeral entry out of your account," Mr O'Higgins suggested.
Mr Dunlop said he did not accept that. The meeting was at Newtownpark Avenue at Mr Cosgrave's suggestion because the former senator had said he had to go to a funeral.
Mr O'Higgins said Mr Dunlop had then said it was a removal. Where did that information come from?
Mr Dunlop said it was from Mr O'Higgins's client.
Mr O'Higgins said an entry in Mr Dunlop's diary for November 11th, 1992, stated: "2.30 LTC @ Newtownpark Avenue".
He said it was an unusual time for a removal, and Mr Dunlop had then said the meeting did not take place until an hour or two later.
Mr Dunlop said he was telling it like it was.
Mr O'Higgins put it to him that the diary entry was a forgery.
"I deny it's a forgery," Mr Dunlop said.
There were a variety of entries that day in the same pen for appointments with other politicians.
"This was a day I was delivering not only to your client but to others," he said. He had met politicians that day and paid £5,000 to Mr Cosgrave, £3,000 to another politician and £4,000 to another - £12,000 in total.
Mr O'Higgins said that around that time Mr Dunlop received £70,000 from a developer on foot on an invoice for genuine work.
Mr Dunlop said he spent quite a substantial part of it on a lot of politicians and the November 1992 election.
The money was transferred to his own bank account.
He said the work had been for consultation work for a stadium at Nealstown. He agreed he had received a further £64,000 on foot of another invoice categorised as expenses.
Mr O'Higgins suggested he had a black book where he would write every single illicit transaction because that was his nature.
Mr Dunlop said he had no such book. "What your client and I and other people's clients were indulging in was corrupt, illegal and furtive. I didn't keep records of what I gave to individual councillors in individual circumstances."
Mr O'Higgins said Mr Dunlop constantly floated the notion that he and his cronies were not in any way fazed by the setting up of the tribunal. Mr Dunlop was at the time on his own television programme and a panellist taking part in discussions.
"Here people were talking to the No 1 suspect. You were a deceitful person, using every opportunity you could to fool people," Mr O'Higgins suggested.