Adviser denies EU letter gave advantage to Esat

A former legal adviser to Esat Telecom has said a page of a letter from the European Commission to Mr Michael Lowry concerning the 1995 mobile phone licence competition and which came into his possession, conferred no advantage on Esat Digifone.

Mr Jarleth Burke said he did not believe the page was confidential and that he believed any of the other bidders could have sourced it in the way he did.

The former legal and regulatory affairs counsel with Esat Telecom said it was his belief that he got a copy of the first page of the July 1995 letter from an official in the European Commission, Mr Christian Hocepied. He did not believe he got the document from an Irish civil servant working on the licence competition; nor did he believe he got the document from someone else within Esat.

He said he could not remember the letter, or receiving it, or passing it on. He never saw the second page of the letter until shown it by the tribunal.

He told Mr Rossa Fanning, for Mr Lowry, that he would have remembered if he had received the letter from the then minister as this would have been "extraordinary, out of the blue and unexpected".

Mr Burke said it was likely the document was sent to him by fax by Mr Hocepied. He contested the statement by Mr John Coughlan SC, for the tribunal, that "on the face of it" someone had "topped and tailed" the page so as to obscure its provenance. He said that was "a serious allegation to make" and was not the way he worked. He said the fax bannerhead could have become obscured when the document was being copied by him.

Mr Justice Moriarty said it seemed "improbable" that one page of the letter would be faxed to him without a cover sheet. Mr Burke said he had no memory of a cover sheet.

Mr Burke said his possession of the letter "did not, could not, and was not intended to" confer any advantage to Esat Digifone. He did not consider the letter to be significant.

He said the "culture of secrecy" was more characteristic of Ireland than the European Commission. He said he believed the document could have been given to him as a "courtesy" by the Commission. The second page of the letter may have been held back because possession of it by Esat Digifone could have encouraged the consortium to make a complaint to the Commission in relation to cross-border interconnections.

The letter concerned the outcome of negotiations between the Department and the Commission concerning the fee that would be charged for the mobile phone licence to be issued as a result of the competition.

Mr Denis O'Brien is to ask the tribunal to seek permission from the Oireachtas to provide an indemnity to a Danish consultant so that he can give evidence.

The tribunal has heard that the consultant, Mr Michael Andersen of Andersen Management International (AMI), has said he is not prepared to give evidence unless the tribunal complies with certain conditions.

The tribunal continues today.