It was overshadowed by the outbreak of foot-and-mouth in the Republic, but last week's developments at the tribunal have immense significance for Ray Burke.
For the first time the tribunal has come close to establishing a money trail linking contributions to the former Fianna Fail minister to a major land deal. The implications for Mr Burke, who has already been accused of lying and fabricating evidence, are enormous.
Mr Burke was relatively unscathed by the questioning on Century Radio, and the allegations made about him by Mr James Gogarty remain shrouded in confusion. Yet he appears to have tripped up badly just as he entered the last furlong of his marathon tribunal appearance.
His downfall came when he attempted to explain the movement of £15,000 sterling through his accounts in 1985. Mr Burke claimed he withdrew the sum in London, brought it back to Dublin, then travelled back to London with it and finally lodged it in Jersey. The tribunal found this explanation implausible.
"Why didn't you just spend 30p on a postage stamp?" Mr Justice Flood asked - and went on the money trail.
What was found was a web of offshore companies and accounts masking the true source of payments into Mr Burke's account in Jersey. The £15,000 lodgment, and a further lodgment of £60,000 in November 1984, came not from Mr Burke, but from a Channel Islands-registered company, Canio Ltd.
Mr Burke then hand-delivered a letter to the chairman explaining his `'failure of recollection" and admitting the money had indeed come from a third party. But the damage had been done.
The change in events gives the lie to Mr Joe McGowan's florid recollections of lavish fund-raising events for Mr Burke in Britain. "On occasions the drink was flowing like a river" as donors queued up to help the cause, he told the tribunal last year. In reality, however, the money came largely from Brennan and McGowan-linked companies.
The tribunal discovered that Canio was 100 per cent owned by a company called Ardcarn Ltd. And this was owned in three equal shares by companies controlled by Mr Burke's old builder friends, Mr Tom Brennan and Mr Joe McGowan, and a new name to the tribunal, auctioneer Mr John Finnegan.
More significantly, in the early 1980s Canio Ltd bought about 100 acres of land in Sandyford, which formed the family farm of Mr Frank Aiken, the former Fianna Fail minister. According to the tribunal, Canio bought the lands with a view to selling them on to Kilnamanagh Estates, one of Brennan and McGowan's main building companies. The lands were rezoned from agriculture to housing and largely built upon.
To buy the lands, Canio borrowed, and to secure these borrowings it took out a mortgage on the lands. The company then paid Mr Burke £60,000 from these borrowed funds. It appears the lands were acquired for £1.3 million, and their value was expected to rise to £4 million with planning permission.
Mr Burke says he had nothing to do with the lands. He knew the money came from Brennan and McGowan but didn't concern himself with how it was raised. He was a member of Dublin County Council from 1967 to 1978 and was chairman from 1985 to 1987. He didn't know when they were rezoned.
There the matter rests until next week.