Dramatic as it is, Mr James Gogarty's evidence before the Planning Tribunal could easily be overshadowed by the appearance of the UK-based property developer Mr Tom Gilmartin, expected to take place later this year.
Mr Gilmartin has already made a sensational allegation about a £50,000 payment he says he made to the EU Commissioner, Mr Padraig Flynn, in the 1980s. Mr Gilmartin says he intended the money to be a political donation to Fianna Fail, but the party says it can find no record of such a payment.
Mr Flynn has denied receiving the cheque.
Yesterday, Mr Gilmartin told
The Irish Times the Flynn allegation was only one of many he could make, based on his experience of property development and planning in Dublin.
Mr Gogarty was a middle-ranking construction industry figure who had little direct contact with leading politicians. He met the former Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Ray Burke, only once; his evidence about the payments to Mr Burke during this meeting in 1989 will be heard at the tribunal this week.
In contrast, Mr Gilmartin was a millionaire property developer who met and lobbied a long line of Fianna Fail politicians in the late 1980s in his quest to build Ireland's largest shopping centre at Quarryvale in west Dublin.
The money involved in developing the 180-acre Quarryvale site was greater than any of the projects Mr Gogarty was working on. Mr Gilmartin paid £5.5 million for the last 50 acres of the site in 1990. He was also involved in assembling a substantial site for another shopping centre at Bachelors Walk and Lower Ormond Quay, Dublin.
Both projects ended in frustration for Mr Gilmartin. He lobbied Mr Flynn, then Minister for the Environment, to give Quarryvale the same urban renewal tax incentives given to develop The Square shopping centre in Tallaght.
He brought in a Cork-based property developer, Mr Owen O'Callaghan, to develop the project, but Mr O'Callaghan ended up buying out his interest in the site. Nothing came of the city centre project, which was refined by Arlington Securities. Mr Gilmartin is intensely bitter about the Quarryvale debacle, which caused him severe financial problems. Yesterday he accused elements within Fianna Fail of trying to discredit him and to push his allegations "under the carpet".
Yet he remains doubtful about the usefulness of tribunals and continues to insist they are "futile". "I didn't want to get involved. I kept my mouth shut for 10 years, until I was forced into talking by the tribunal," he said.
However, he says all his allegations are backed up by independent documentary evidence. In many cases, he says, the tribunal lawyers who interviewed him in England last year seemed to have knowledge of this material.
Mr Gilmartin said he did not know Mr Flynn very well. "I met Bertie Ahern far more often." Other Fianna Fail figures he met about Quarryvale included Mr Haughey, the late Brian Lenihan, Mr Seamus Brennan and Mr Liam Lawlor.
He insists he was motivated not by money, but by a desire to create jobs for Irish emigrants to return to.
Mr Gilmartin's vacillation in regard to the tribunal has been well aired in recent months. At first he refused to talk to tribunal lawyers, then he agreed to. He swore an affidavit covering some of his allegation, and agreed to travel to Ireland to give evidence.
But following the decision of an Appeal Commissioner to disregard the findings of the McCracken tribunal and reduce Mr Charles Haughey's tax bill from £2 million to zero, Mr Gilmartin changed his mind again. However, it now emerges that he may have little choice. Tribunal lawyers last year threatened to take legal proceedings against him in the British courts to compel him to co-operate.
In any case, Mr Gilmartin never fulfilled his earlier threat to write to the tribunal and tell them he would not be appearing, so as far as Mr Justice Flood's team of lawyers is concerned, his original agreement to testify still stood.
Mr Gilmartin followed last week's proceedings in Dublin Castle from his home in Luton, and was watching the Late Late Show on Friday when Mr Flynn appeared.
Asked by Gay Byrne if he knew Mr Gilmartin, the EU Commissioner said: "Yeah, I haven't seen him now for some years. I met him. He's a Sligo man who went to England and made a lot of money. Came back. Wanted to do a lot of business in Ireland. Didn't work out for him. He's not well. His wife isn't well. And he's out of sorts."
At the weekend, Mr Gilmartin responded angrily to the remarks, saying he was reconsidering giving evidence to the tribunal. He said his health was the "very best" and the reference to his wife had caused distress to family and friends.
After he left the studio, Mr Flynn telephoned the Late Late Show with a retraction. Mr Byrne told his viewers: "In the interview it was suggested by Pee Flynn that Tom Gilmartin was sick. As far as Pee is concerned Tom Gilmartin is not sick and has never been seriously sick and we would just like to say sorry and apologise for that."
Mr Gilmartin also said Mr Flynn had repeatedly tried to contact him after the allegations about a £50,000 payment to a politician surfaced last September. He says he has kept documentary evidence to prove this.