Epic of the Mauler and Fireball concluded

THERE was little or no warning. It was just past 3 p.m. and Proinsias De Rossa had dealt with a question from Patrick MacEntee on the jury's role in deciding the meaning of the allegedly libellous Sunday Independent article. And then it happened. Mr MacEntee sat down.

People in the courtroom looked at each other uncertainly. Could it be true? Then Mr De Rossa's counsel was on his feet and we knew for certain. After six days in this hearing and a total of 12 days, including the aborted trial last year, the cross-examination of the plaintiff was over.

In the boxing analogy, this has been an epic 15-rounder between the Monaghan Mauler and the Finglas Fireball. And if the most dramatic exchanges came in the early rounds, the opponents still had the energy for a final flurry yesterday.

Mr MacEntee's repeated probings on the plaintiff's alleged lack of frankness - this may or may not be a veiled reference to Mr De Rossa's adult conversion from Frank to Proinsias - erupted on the last day of cross-examination, when counsel went further and accused him of not telling the truth in a 1992 interview with The Irish Times.

"Ah yes, I'm not surprised the Sunday Independent is calling me a liar as well", said an angry Mr De Rossa. A simple lapse of memory, he insisted, had led him to tell The Irish Times he had had an "overnight" stop in Moscow on the way back from Korea. He had later checked and found the stay was longer. "So what?"

But that lost week in Moscow on the way home, along with the stopover on the way out, amounted to a "strange tale", Mr MacEntee suggested. "You don't generally have a great deal of bother with your memory, do you, Mr De Rossa?" he wondered. "Are there many bits of your life where there are gaps of 10 days?"

Mr MacEntee also reminded the plaintiff of another comment in the interview - that he had been left to "carry the can" for someone else's "stupidity" in the Moscow letter incident. Stupidity was a curious choice of word, counsel suggested. Did the plaintiff want to stand over it?

Given Mr MacEntee's formidable record as a lawyer, litigants are entitled to be nervous about standing over anything at his suggestion. Nevertheless, Mr De Rossa stood over the word, perhaps checking the floorboards for hinges before standing down.

The last word on the marathon goes to the plaintiff himself. Asked about another interview - in the Evening Herald - he noted that his replies had been paraphrased by the journalist: "As you know from my time in the witness box, I never give an answer which is less than a few paragraphs long." To this, the press gallery nodded as one.

The plaintiff's party colleague, Pat Rabbitte, took the stand briefly and recalled that he had been negotiating on Democratic Left's possible involvement in government at the time of the disputed article. When he read it, he knew it was "curtains" for the negotiations.

But no sooner had Pat opened the curtains than they were pulled again. A legal argument arose and was unresolved when the judge recalled the jury to send them away for the weekend.

An interesting footnote on yesterday's proceedings was the second appearance in evidence of Lewis Carroll's most famous creation. She was cited by Mr MacEntee as an influence on the thought process of Mr De Rossa during an exchange on an answer to an Evening Herald question about links between the Workers' Party and the Official IRA.

"This is Alice In Wonderland logic. It says what you mean it to say", was Mr MacEntee's interpretation of what Mr De Rossa was now saying about what he said then. Alice has become a central figure in this legal drama, but sources could not confirm yesterday whether she will be called to give evidence.