MORIARTY TRIBUNAL:THE ECONOMIST, Dr Peter Bacon, has said the methodology used in deciding the 1995 mobile phone licence competition led to "inherently inaccurate" conclusions.
Dr Bacon was asked by the tribunal to give it assistance in 2003 when witnesses were giving evidence about the 1995 mobile phone licence competition.
The competition was won by Esat Digifone, the consortium founded by businessman Denis O'Brien.
The second ranking consortium in the competition, Persona, has initiated proceedings for damages against the State.
Dr Bacon was called to the witness box yesterday so that he could be questioned by counsel for Mr O'Brien, Eoin McGonigal SC.
Dr Bacon said the evaluation team, which had decided on the winning, bid had intended to conduct a quantitative analysis of the data submitted in the bids, and apply weightings to the resulting scores.
A qualitative assessment of the bids was also to be used to act as a check on the scores that emerged but the quantitative process was abandoned in the course of the evaluation process.
"The qualitative approach was going to be used as a check of the quantitative data, and yet this quantitative model withered, fell out of bed, was abandoned, you choose the word, but it ceased to be used and was replaced by what the evaluators called the qualitative approach."
This involved ratings such as A,B,C, and D, being converted to numerical values, but Dr Bacon did not agree with this approach. "Substituting A, B, and C for 1, 2 and 3 is not substituting a qualitative for a quantitative approach." He said the exercise produced "an imprecise quantitative score".
Referring to a key table drawn up by the team near the end of the process, he said: "In fact, the conclusions, were, you know, inherently inaccurate."
"I don't think you have to be an expert in anything to fail to see how you can add A, B, C and D together and get an average, and that's what their Table 16 did."
Mr McGonigal asked Dr Bacon about the circumstances surrounding his being engaged by the tribunal. Dr Bacon said he was given "a rain forest" of documents and several points the tribunal team wanted clarified. However, he said he was not "steered" towards any direction by the tribunal legal team by way of the documents he was given.
"I honestly don't believe that was the case. I have been around long enough to know if I am being led by the nose in a direction, and in fifteen years, acting as an independent economic consultant, I have made my reputation on independence," he said.
"I am an economic consultant, I am not a lobbyist. I honestly believe that my reputation around town would be that for anybody that wants to lead somebody in a direction, I don't think they would be phoning me."
"We went away on the basis of the documentation that were provided to us and we drew our own judgment," he said.
Starting his line of questioning, Mr McGonigal explored a number of matters regarding the tribunal, about which he said his client had concerns.
Mr O'Brien, he said, was concerned that the inquiry might have intended concluding its work on the competition process, and criticising it, without revealing to the public that Dr Bacon had been engaged as a consultant to the tribunal legal team.
It also seemed that without Dr Bacon's assistance, the tribunal team would never have been able to understand how the competition evaluation process had worked, he said.
He also had concerns about tribunal barristers working as investigators in the private phase of the tribunal's work, and then presenting that work in the public phase.
Dr Bacon is to continue his evidence on Wednesday.