Civil servant denies meeting Esat lawyer

The civil servant who chaired the committee which selected the winner of the State's second mobile-phone licence competition said yesterday he had had no meeting in July 1995 with a solicitor acting for Esat Telecom.

Mr Martin Brennan told the Moriarty tribunal he had no memory of meeting Mr Jarleth Burke during the period and that he certainly had no meeting with Mr Burke which would have required him to take a minute.

He said he knew in July 1995 that Esat Telecom was interested in the licence competition and he had no contact with Mr Burke which would have raised issues covered in a protocol drafted by the selection committee and which concerned contacts with prospective bidders.

Mr Brennan was responding to Mr Jerry Healy SC, for the tribunal, on his seventh day in the witness box as part of the tribunal's inquiry into the 1995 licence competition. The competition was won by Esat Digifone, of which Esat Telecom was a major shareholder.

The tribunal is investigating how a copy of part of a letter from the European Commissioner, Mr Karel van Miert, to the minister for transport, energy and communications, Mr Michael Lowry, came into the possession of Mr Burke. A copy of the letter was faxed to the Department by a Commission official. A hard copy sent to Mr Lowry's office arrived some days later and, unlike the copy which came into the possession of Mr Burke, was dated.

A number of faxes and letters seeking information on the matter have been sent by the tribunal to the Commission but, according to Mr Healy, the tribunal is still awaiting an explanation as to how the document may have come into the hands of Mr Burke.

Mr Healy read out a memorandum from Mr Owen O'Connell, a solicitor with William Fry solicitors who acted for Mr Denis O'Brien's Communicorp group in 1995. Communicorp was subsequently replaced by Esat Telecom in the Digifone consortium.

The tribunal heard that Mr O'Connell was concerned about inferences which were being drawn in the media in relation to the content of a letter sent by him to a London solicitor in June 1995 which contained mention of discussions then going on between Mr Lowry's Department and the Commission.

Mr O'Connell said he would not have drafted the letter without instructions from his clients, and the information contained in the letter would have come from his clients.

The people who normally gave him instructions in relation to Communicorp were Mr O'Brien, Mr Eddie Kelly and Mr Peter O'Donoghue. He could not recall who gave him instructions in relation to the letter.

Mr O'Connell pointed out that there were press reports at the time covering the matters mentioned in his letter from which, he said, the content of his letter could be inferred.

Furthermore Mr O'Brien and Mr Kelly may have been given some of the information at issue during a meeting they had had with Mr Brennan and another civil servant involved, Mr Fintan Towey, a day before his letter to the London solicitor was written. He also said Mr Burke might have received some information from his contacts in the Commission.

Mr Brennan said he did have conversations with a number of the expected bidders around this time about the extent to which the competition might be delayed as a result of the dispute with the commission.

However, he said, there was no mention of the conversation in the minute of his and Mr Towey's meeting with Mr O'Brien and Mr Kelly. A minute of a meeting a day later with another prospective bidder recorded a discussion on the matter.

Mr Brennan said he was "absolutely adamant" that the solution to the difficulty which arose between the Department and the Commission was first suggested by him and not by Mr Lowry. The solution involved the fee for the licence being capped at £15 million.