They didn't look like much to fight over, let alone launch a series of court actions. Two unremarkable cardboard boxes, sealed at the top with masking tape, the pick of Mr George Redmond's files.
Yet these two boxes - Exhibits A and A1 before the tribunal yesterday - could hold the key to the tangle of alleged corruption Mr Justice Flood is investigating.
But for the moment all the chairman could do was gaze lovingly at them. The head of the Criminal Assets Bureau, Chief Supt Fachtna Murphy, said he was "producing the documents but not furnishing them". If the tribunal wanted the boxes, it would have to fight for them.
Chief Supt Murphy was put in the witness-box, and the sparring between the legal teams began. It seemed we would learn why CAB was so anxious to retain absolute and exclusive control over the files for its investigation into Mr Redmond. Why it went to the High Court and the Supreme Court on a case it always seemed likely to lose. And how it was that Mr Redmond was arrested last Friday, only hours after the Supreme Court ruled.
But then, on the urging of CAB's legal team, the tribunal went into private session. The rest of the debate over whether the tribunal should have access to the files took place behind closed doors.
Up to now Mr Justice Flood has used the option of private hearings sparingly. In ruling after ruling he has emphasised the public nature of his work. Yet all this was put aside to accommodate the CAB yesterday.
Remarkably, counsel for the public interest supported the proposal to go in camera. Mr James O'Reilly SC, who is instructed by the Attorney General and has attended a handful of hearings, assented once the CAB put on the "red light".
There may be occasions when it is not in the public interest to have matters heard in open session. But even if yesterday was one such occasion, why was there so little debate about it? The taxpayer's interests, without which this tribunal would not exist and without whom the lawyers would not be paid, were abandoned with barely a murmur of dissent.
If it was any comfort to the public gallery and the press, Mr Redmond's solicitor, Mr Anthony Harris, was also excluded from the in camera proceedings.
Before this happened, Chief Supt Murphy repeated his claim of privilege over the Redmond cache of documents. Mr Felix McEnroy SC, for the tribunal, argued that since CAB had already furnished some of the documents to Mr Redmond, and others to a local authority, Chief Supt Murphy's objection was one of "formality rather than substance".
Chief Supt Murphy said CAB might give the tribunal the documents once its investigations are over, depending on legal advice. He said information the CAB received before it arrested Mr Redmond in February had "thrown a totally different light on the previous Garda investigation and the reasons why in respect of George Redmond there hadn't been a prosecution".
In 1989 Mr Redmond, then the assistant Dublin city and county manager, was questioned during an inconclusive Garda investigation of planning corruption, led by Supt Brendan Burns. A second investigation in 1997, which centred on the allegations made by Mr James Gogarty, foundered when Mr Gogarty refused to sign a statement.
So what information had the CAB received? From whom? And how could it have "thrown a totally different light" on the 1989 investigation?
For the first time, a legal team representing the Director of Public Prosecutions attended, presumably to argue the primacy of criminal proceedings over those of the tribunal. The inescapable logic of this argument is that the documents cannot be furnished following Mr Redmond's court appearance last Friday.
The Supreme Court judgment in the tribunal's appeal against the Fianna Fail TD, Mr Liam Lawlor, due to be delivered at 11 o'clock today, will be of enormous importance for Mr Justice Flood and his team.
In the afternoon, the developer Mr Michael Bailey was back in the witness-box, still tying himself in knots. By now there are few people in Dublin Castle who don't have sympathy for Mr Bailey after the grilling he has received over the past week. Still cordial and upbeat, he doesn't look as if he's missing the Galway Races too much - so far.
Yesterday a new form of contradiction emerged, this time between Mr Bailey and his senior counsel, Mr Colm Allen. The witness recalled meeting Mr Gogarty at the latter's home in Clontarf in June 1997. However, during Mr Gogarty's cross-examination, Mr Allen referred to a meeting in Mr Gogarty's then home in Sutton in July 1996. Mr Allen later corrected this error.
Yesterday Mr Bailey said Mr Gogarty demanded an additional £25,000 in interest on top of the £150,000 "finder's fee" he was getting for arranging the sale of the Murphy lands.
A final settlement was reached between the two in June 1996, after Mr Gogarty threatened to implicate the Baileys in media investigations into planning irregularities current at the time.
Mr Des O'Neill SC, for the tribunal, asked the witness if he had a problem being identified as being at the meeting with Mr Ray Burke in 1989.
Mr Bailey said he didn't want to be implicated.
