The payment of £30,000 by one of the land-owning companies, Grafton Construction, to Mr Ray Burke was logically going to benefit these lands, Mr Frank Callanan SC, counsel for Mr James Gogarty, suggested to Mr Roger Copsey, financial director of JMSE.
The £30,000 was the "bulk" of Grafton's operating profit and 25 per cent of the net profit of JMSE, so how was it, Mr Callanan asked, "you still didn't query or check the payment of £30,000" with Mr Murphy snr, or other senior management?
"The reason I didn't was that I had no idea what the accounts of Grafton Construction looked like at the time of the payment," Mr Copsey replied.
Earlier in his evidence, Mr Copsey said he spent 40 per cent of his time with these companies and was an expert management accountant. Mr Callanan suggested that it was "inconceivable" that he did not have some idea of the "order of magnitude of the profits of JMSE and of Grafton construction".
Mr Copsey disagreed, saying, "you are completely speculating, which is something which, as an accountant, we are trained not to do, which might make us somewhat boring, but nevertheless that's the way we are trained to think".
Mr Callanan asked how a financial director could justify a payment of £30,000 unless there was a benefit accruing to Grafton Construction. Mr Copsey said, "I, in fact, do not have to justify that there has to be a direct benefit".
Mr Copsey explained the reason for routing the payment through Grafton Construction. "There were a number of companies from which I could have chosen," he said. "I knew that the lands were going to be sold and therefore, from the point of view of pure accounting logic, it would have been the most logical place for that to go."