No photograph of him has appeared in an Irish newspaper. He lives in complete seclusion behind the high walls of a Guernsey mansion. He has paid millions to his legal team at the tribunal over the past two years without ever meeting or speaking to them.
Welcome to the mysterious, lonely world of Mr Joseph Murphy snr, the multimillionaire founder of the Murphy business empire. Like Howard Hughes, Mr Murphy, now a frail 82-year-old, is obsessed by a desire for secrecy and controls his interests via an army of proxies, principally his son, Joseph jnr.
After the astonishing revelations about Mr George Redmond's wealth, the spotlight is now turning to a far, far richer man, whose falling out with his former right-hand man, Mr James Gogarty, directly led to the setting up of the tribunal. Mr Murphy is due to start giving evidence in Guernsey next week, but first the various sides are scrapping over the ground rules that will apply.
The media are angry at Mr Justice Flood's decision to effectively exclude them from the Guernsey hearings, and The Irish Times and RTE will make submissions on the matter this morning. If a compromise cannot be found, the High Court is likely to be called on to decide this issue of press freedom.
Then there are the incessant rows over documents, which continued yesterday. In spite of weeks of requests and wrangling, the tribunal still hasn't received the files it is seeking from the Murphy Group. The net result is that its lawyers will be seriously hamstrung when they open their cross-examination of Mr Murphy next Tuesday, while the media and the general public, as things currently stand, will be absent.
Mr Justice Flood justifies this unorthodox approach by referring to Mr Murphy's parlous state of health. The rules were changed for the hearing of Mr Gogarty's evidence, too, he points out. But next week's hearing in Guernsey - Mr Murphy is too frail to travel to Ireland - has all the signs of a rushed job, carried out inexplicably behind closed doors.
One possible reason for Mr Murphy's obsession with secrecy was unpacked in Dublin Castle yesterday, when the infamous Conroy affidavit was finally read into the record. Mr Murphy's lawyers went all the way to the Supreme Court to try to prevent this affidavit by the former chief executive of the Murphy Group, the late Mr Liam Conroy, being revealed.
It is now clear why. Mr Conroy, in an affidavit sworn for an unfair dismissals case in 1989, paints a deeply unflattering portrait of his former boss, whom he accuses of tax evasion, breaches of exchange controls and heavy drinking. More importantly in the context of the tribunal, the document backs up Mr Gogarty's allegations about Mr Murphy and supports his thesis that the multimillionaire sold off his lands in north Dublin in a panic because he feared being caught by the Revenue Commissioners.
The document is all the more credible in that Mr Conroy also attacks Mr Gogarty, whom he describes as "irascible and litigious" and "virtually impossible to work with".
Mr Garrett Cooney SC, for the Murphy Group, sought to introduce a number of documents he said refuted Mr Conroy's claims, but the chairman ruled that Mr Murphy should make his case when he gives evidence next week.
Mr Cooney declared this "a historic injustice" to his client. Referring to the publication of the Conroy affidavit, he said: "a bell once rung cannot be unrung".
The urgency of preparing for Mr Murphy's turn in the witness-box delayed further evidence from Mr Redmond until the afternoon, but when it came the former assistant Dublin city and county manager had the audience in Dublin Castle on the edge of their seats.
"I deeply regret, in any circumstance, that I did what I did," he said, when asked how he now felt about the fact that he accepted payments in return for advice.
Mr Pat Hanratty SC, for the tribunal, pointed out that when Mr Redmond was de facto county manager in the 1980s, a set of rules of conduct for local authority officials was in force. This required officials to declare gifts or outside interests, and to avoid "unjust enrichment" by drawing remuneration other than their official salary.
Mr Redmond, who has admitted receiving payments from "entrepreneurs", said he regretted it if he had transgressed those rules.
When Mr Hanratty asked if he was sorry he had, the witness replied: "That's the understatement . . . yes, of course, I am."
Mr Cooney intervened to spoil the moment, and launched his strongest attack yet on the chairman and the tribunal. He accused them of allowing Mr Gogarty to sit in the witness-box and abuse lawyers and lay people. When Mr Gogarty made false claims about Mr Murphy jnr allegedly assaulting a woman, the chairman and tribunal lawyer, Mr John Gallagher, "sat on their hands" and allowed him to continue, Mr Cooney said.
Mr Justice Flood objected to Mr Cooney's "haranguing" and said counsel was trying to "bully" the tribunal. But he went no further in responding to what he may have interpreted as an attempt to "collapse the scrum".
After a lengthy interlude, Mr Redmond was again asked if he regretted what he had done, and he restated his contrition. But when Mr Hanratty asked him for permission to obtain his telephone records from 1985 to the present, the witness said he would first have to consult his solicitor.
Mr Hanratty revealed that Mr Redmond had furnished the tribunal with a "bag" of his diaries, as requested, but every single one was found to be blank.