THE MORIARTY (payments to politicians) tribunal is to sit again today in relation to the role played by economist Dr Peter Bacon in the tribunal's inquiry into the 1995 second mobile phone licence competition.
The unexpected sitting is the latest twist in an ongoing row between the tribunal and businessman Denis O'Brien, founder of the consortium Esat Digifone, which won the 1995 competition. When the tribunal sat in June of last year, it had been thought that that was the last sitting.
Mr O'Brien wants to be allowed to question Dr Bacon about his work for the tribunal.
Tribunal chairman Mr Justice Michael Moriarty ruled in March of this year, when the tribunal sat for an unexpected hearing, that Mr O'Brien had been given an opportunity to question Dr Bacon but had failed to do so. However the chairman now appears to have altered that position.
At the March hearing, Mr O'Brien's senior counsel, Eoin McGonigal, said his client wanted to be in attendance on the day Dr Bacon was questioned and Mr O'Brien may well be in attendance at today's hearing.
During the March hearing, Mr Justice Moriarty said he would not allow certain matters which had already been canvassed in a High Court appeal which Mr O'Brien had taken against the tribunal, to be canvassed during the questioning of Dr Bacon. If this were to happen, it would be the juristic equivalent of "groundhog day".
He "emphatically rejected" any suggestion of a conspiracy against Mr O'Brien on the part of the tribunal or any member of its legal team.
In the course of the sitting, Mr McGonigal accused the tribunal of concealing documents and conspiring against his client. However Mr Justice Moriarty said a document which was relevant to the matter at hand but which had not been discovered to Mr O'Brien until recently, had been overlooked because of a photocopying error.
Mr McGonigal said Mr O'Brien believed the inquiry was going to produce a report that was damaging to him and critical of the 1995 mobile phone licence competition. He said a solicitor's note of a meeting with Dr Bacon was only conveyed to his client a few days earlier, but should have been produced years ago.
He said the note indicated a direction to Dr Bacon from tribunal legal counsel to "completely undermine" expert consultants engaged in the 1995 competition.
Dr Bacon gave background assistance to the tribunal's inquiry into the phone licence competition, though this was not disclosed at the time to the witnesses called in relation to the matter.
Mr McGonigal said there appeared to have been a "deliberate agenda to damn the competition process and those persons involved". The tribunal's second and final report will focus on payments to former Fine Gael minister, Michael Lowry.
