SENIOR officials at the Department of Communications have defended the Government's decision to award the GSM mobile phone licence to the Esat Digifone consortium.

The competition surrounding the awarding of the licence was

`squeaky clean" and would "stand up to any scrutiny", according to the Secretary of the Department, Mr John Loughrey.

He said the selection process, which had been objective and comprehensive, had resulted in the best consortium being identified.

The competition for the GSM licence was "a model of its type", Mr Loughrey said. "There was nothing dodgy about this competition whatsoever and I believe it will stand up to any scrutiny."

Mr Loughrey said there were "innuendoes that purported to be facts out there" and the record needed to be set straight. There was no outside or political interference in the decision-making process.

"The Minister [Mr Michael Lowry] had no hand, act, or part in the process," he added.

Factors such as the promise of new jobs or the location of a consortium's headquarters also played no part in the final outcome, he said.

"The competition framework we devised was almost hermetically sealed... there was no interference from anybody outside," Mr Loughrey said.

"This is as squeaky clean a competition as you can imagine being run by any public sector in the European Union."

The sole determinant, he said, was finding a consortium which would give the Irish business sector and the Irish telephone user the best service. Mr Loughrey said no conclusion could be drawn other than that Esat Digifone was "the best performer" under the criteria set out by the Department.

The licence for the second mobile phone network was won by the Esat Digifone consortium last November, but a number of the losing consortiums have asked for a full disclosure of the reasoning behind the decision.

The deputy chief of mission at the US Embassy, Mr Denis Sandberg, has also asked the Department to meet the losing bidders to explain the reasoning behind the selection process.

Mr Loughrey said there had been much comment about why full disclosure had not taken place, but added that all of the groups which bid for the licence had insisted on permanent confidentiality clauses. Breaking those confidentiality clauses could result in possible legal action. Mr Loughrey said full disclosure "could not be possible and it would not be possible".

The Department has recently sought legal advice from the Attorney General's office about the extent of information which could be released, and plans to contact the defeated consortiums next week to arrange a series of one-to-one meetings.

But Mr Loughrey stressed yesterday that only a very small amount of information could be given to each group, and that no comparative information would be supplied.

Asked why a senior diplomat at the US Embassy in Dublin had written to the Department on behalf of a number of US bidders seeking full disclosure, Mr Loughrey replied: "An American diplomat has gotta do what an American diplomat has gotta do."

In response to journalists' questions, Mr Loughrey agreed that there had been much lobbying in the months before the competition began, but added that "once the competition started, the shutters came down". The project team of civil servants and international consultants, which made the decision, did not entertain lobbying, according to Mr Loughrey.

He said Mr Lowry had never met the project team and when the team brought the winning name to the Minister he had accepted that decision.