The company which inherited the CIE rail-signalling project from one of the original contractors have rejected the consultants' report which prompted the Oireachtas inquiry into the project's collapse.
Witnesses from Alstom Signalling Ltd claimed there were "serious misunderstandings" and that the inquiry was proceeding on a "false premise".
Alstom inherited the mini-CTC signalling project in 1998 when it took over Sasib, the company which, in 1997, was jointly awarded the mini-CTC contract with MNL (Modern Networks Ltd).
Both original contractors have been criticised for their handling of the project which had a two-year deadline and a £14 million budget at the outset but is still unfinished and is thought will cost a total of £50 million to complete.
Alstom's managing director, Mr Charles Burch, defended Sasib's reputation and its project proposal. He told the inquiry it was Iarnrod Eireann's attempt to change the specifications of the signalling system after the contract began that caused the difficulties.
Iarnrod Eireann was also supposed to provide essential basic data about the existing railway and its operation so that Sasib could design a system, he said.
But almost a year after the contract was signed, little information was available and there was still some outstanding by December 1999 when the project was supposed to be finished.
He said Iarnrod Eireann could not locate copies of its signalling principles and operating rules and Sasib/Alstom ended up compiling much of the data themselves.
One of Alstom's directors, Mr Pier Prina Mello, who also worked at Sasib, told the inquiry Sasib was familiar with MNL before they formed an association for the mini-CTC project. But he said while MNL told Sasib it was involved in another contract with Iarnrod Eireann at the same time, it did not go into details.
The other contract was to lay cables for Esat along some of the same rail lines earmarked for mini-CTC. The attempt to install both systems together when only the Esat project was ultimately successful, has been criticised in previous sessions of the inquiry.
Another Alstom director, Mr Chris Fossey, said Iarnrod Eireann had attempted to "fuse two totally separate contracts" and MNL, displaying some "commercial naievete", had tried to satisfy both.
Mr Fossey claimed Iarnrod Eireann's priorities shifted from the signalling cables to the Esat cables and that the rail company put "undue pressure" on MNL personnel to follow suit.
He said the result was that Esat became "the cuckoo in the nest" and the attitude to the signalling project became "CTC be damned".
The contract was subsequently terminated and a settlement was reached between the rail company and Alstom.