Department of Communications officials tried to conceal the details of meetings held in the run-up to the issuing of the second mobile phone licence, tribunal lawyers have claimed.
Mr John Coughlan SC, for the tribunal, said a decision was made not to keep records of meetings held in the weeks before the licence was issued to Esat Digiphone in May 1996. This amounted to concealment.
However, Mr Fintan Towey, a member of the department's team which evaluated the licence applications, denied there had been any concealment. "There was no such decision. I can't say why no records were kept, but there was no question of a deliberate concealment exercise."
Mr Coughlan said there were "massive problems coming up" in relation to the ownership, financing and share configuration of the winning Esat Digiphone bid at the time the terms of its licence were being negotiated. However, there was no record of these, or of the views of the department.
He detailed a number of meetings that took place in May 1996 at which these issues were discussed. No official had told the tribunal about the meetings.
The tribunal would never have learned about the meetings if an executive of Telenor, the Norwegian shareholder in the East Digiphone joint venture, hadn't mentioned one of them.
Mr Towey said he didn't recall the meetings, but nothing had happened at them that he couldn't stand over.
Earlier Mr Coughlan said the minister for communications, Mr Lowry, told the Cabinet in late April 1996 that the terms of the proposed contract had been agreed with Esat Digiphone when this was not the case at the time.
Mr Towey said he hadn't advised Mr Lowry that this was the case, and no official could have done this at that time.
