Letter breached rules, says witness

Moriarty Tribunal: A member of the Department of Communication team that evaluated the bids for the second mobile phone licence has defended the process and the result it produced.

Mr Fintan Towey, who acted as full-time co-ordinator of the project team in 1995/96, said he was happy to stand over the report produced by the team, as well as the result that saw the licence awarded to Esat Digiphone.

Mr Towey agreed he was the only person to see a letter sent in by International Investments and Underwriting (IIU) in September 1995, which detailed the involvement of IIU's owner, financier Mr Dermot Desmond, in the Esat consortium. In earlier evidence, it emerged that Mr Towey returned the letter after consulting with the chairman of the project team Mr Martin Brennan.

The closing date for applications had passed and this was regarded as an attempt to enhance Esat Digiphone's application.

No copy of the letter was kept on the Department's file. The Department says it only became aware of Mr Desmond's involvement in Esat in April 1996. He told Mr Eoin McGonigal SC, for Mr Denis O'Brien, that the report was an objective analysis and was not influenced by other considerations. Later, he told his own counsel, Mr Richard Nesbitt SC, that the letter was in clear breach of the rules. At that stage, only visual information for use in the bid presentations could be accepted. Any other information was not admissible.

Mr Towey emphasised the confidentiality of the process, saying information would not be given gratuitously to other civil servants. Mr McGonigal remarked that if Esat Digiphone had come first on the basis of a flawed quantitative analysis of the different bids for the licence, one could only imagine "the blood that would have been spilled up at the tribunal". The tribunal resumes today.