Yesterday was a bad day for Mr Denis O'Brien, the hero of the Celtic Tiger now being drawn into the murky world of Irish business as seen from Dublin Castle.
Mr Justice Moriarty emphasised that what had been heard was simply an outline of intended evidence. It would be wrong to come to conclusions at this stage, before Mr O'Brien's evidence, or anyone else's, has been heard.
Mr Justice Moriarty also said the tribunal was aware that the airing of these matters concerning Mr O'Brien comes at a "delicate time", a comment taken to be a reference to Mr O'Brien's current involvement in an attempt to buy Eircom.
Mr O'Brien, of course, is the man who led a successful bid for the second GMS licence in 1995. The granting of this licence to Mr O'Brien's Esat Digifone was overseen by Mr Michael Lowry, the then minister for transport, energy and communications. It was, as was stated yesterday, the pinnacle of Mr Lowry's ministerial career. It was also a milestone for Mr O'Brien. In January 2000, when it was agreed that BT would buy Esat Digifone for £2 billion, his gain was estimated in the region of £230 million.
Now the tribunal is looking at four transactions which involve money coming from Mr O'Brien and going to Mr Lowry or to the party he used to raise funds for, Fine Gael. The transfers are not direct - in some cases the money passed via the ownership of other persons - but none the less the tribunal has opted to examine them in open evidence.
Another factor hangs over the affair. Tribunal counsel Mr John Coughlan SC remarked that the fact the transactions involving Mr Lowry were only discovered at this late stage in the proceedings may influence the tribunal's eventual assessment of evidence heard.
In other words, it is legitimate to take into account the possibility that these were matters Mr Lowry went to great lengths to keep hidden, and for some reason.
The $50,000 (£33,000) donation to Fine Gael in late 1995 from Norwegian company Telenor, via the late Mr David Austin, has already been aired in the media. Telenor, a partner of Esat in the GMS bid, made the initial payment to Mr Austin, who was a senior Fine Gael fund-raiser. Mr O'Brien has denied he "arranged" the payment but a Telenor executive will say that when the company contacted Mr Austin before sending the payment, Mr Austin knew the amount involved as it had been agreed between him and Mr O'Brien.
An invoice sent by Mr Austin to Telenor afterwards reads in part "as agreed with Denis O'Brien". The Fine Gael officer, Mr Jim Miley, will say he was told by Mr Austin in 1998 that the payment was made via Telenor because Mr O'Brien wanted it kept confidential.
Another payment being looked at is a lodgement of £147,000 sterling to an Isle of Man account of Mr Lowry's in late 1996. The money was to be used by the then minister to refurbish a house in Blackrock, Co Dublin. It has been aired that this money came from Mr Austin but yesterday it was revealed that Mr Austin got the money from Mr O'Brien after having sold a house in Spain to the by then telecommunications chief.
The money was lodged to an account in Jersey opened by Mr Austin at the time of the lodgement, and then moved to an account in the Isle of Man opened by Mr Lowry at the time he received the money. The money was returned after Mr Lowry's fall from grace and on the same day the McCracken (Dunnes Payments) Tribunal was established: February 7th, 1997.
The other two transactions to be examined in evidence concern property in England. The properties both involve Mr Lowry. Mr O'Brien says he knows nothing about the deals but £300,000 sterling used came via an associate of his, Mr Aidan Phelan, from an account in London in Mr O'Brien's name. When a bank involved became concerned about money it had lent, Mr Phelan told an executive not to worry about losing their money, because "this was a Denis O'Brien transaction".