A key witness in the Tipperary murder trial has said she spent a night in a hotel after the disappearance of her boyfriend with the man now on trial for his murder.

However, Mary Lowry could not explain how her email address was used for a booking and a payment made from her bank account for another night in a luxury hotel.

Ms Lowry is being cross-examined for a third day in the trial of Patrick Quirke of Breanshamore, Co Tipperary.

He has pleaded not guilty to the murder of Ms Lowry's boyfriend, Bobby Ryan, at an unknown location on a date between 3 June 2011 and 30 April 2013.

Mr Ryan's body was discovered by Mr Quirke on Ms Lowry's farm almost two years after he went missing.

Ms Lowry said Mr Quirke had "crawled back into her life and pretended to be her friend" after Mr Ryan's disappearance in June 2011. But she denied rekindling her affair with Mr Quirke.

She agreed that she had travelled to Dublin for a night in a hotel with him in January 2012 because she felt under pressure.

She said she remembered little about the night because she got drunk because she felt scared.

However, she said nothing happened that night and they did not rekindle their affair.

She said she could not remember if she attended a show in the Olympia that night.

Asked if she had attended the show ‘The Night Joe Dolan's Car Broke Down’ she said she had no memory of it, adding: "It mustn't have been very good".

Defence counsel Bernard Condon asked Ms Lowry if she had false memories after she repeatedly answered his questions by saying "that is what my memory says" or "I don't remember".

Mr Condon suggested such answers were a "pre-emptive strike" in case she was "caught out" later.

Ms Lowry denied this.

She denied spending time with Mr Quirke at the Cliff House Hotel in Waterford in September 2011.

When presented with a record of the booking made with her email address and in the name of Pat Quirke and a reference to a €400 payment to the hotel on her bank account, she said she did not remember ever being in the hotel or in the village of Ardmore.

Asked to explain the payment from her account and the booking reference from her email, she said Mr Quirke had a key to her house and "stranger things have happened".

After repeatedly saying "I can't remember" Mr Condon said she was giving formulaic answers.

He said the reason she was saying she could not remember was because she was refusing to accept that she had in fact gone back to Mr Quirke and resumed her relationship with him after Mr Ryan's disappearance.

Ms Lowry replied: "I did no such thing. I spent every waking day trying to think what happened to Bobby Ryan."

The jury was also told that Ms Lowry had made two complaints to gardaí about Mr Ryan's family putting up missing person posters near her home.

The family had put up posters on the first anniversary of his disappearance.

Asked why she had objected to the posters, Ms Lowry said she felt intimidated by them because Mr Ryan's family was concentrating the posters near her home.

She said she felt they were trying to imply she had "something to with this man who was missing."

She said her children felt intimidated by the posters and she had to do something about it.

She denied it was an incredibly insensitive thing to object to the posters on the anniversary of his disappearance.

She said she had put up many posters herself but accepted she had attempted to take down the posters near her home.