Project member 'never under pressure'

THE MORIARTY TRIBUNAL: A member of the project team which selected the winner of the 1995 mobile phone licence competition has told the tribunal that if he had come under any pressure aimed at influencing his work, he would not have been shy about bringing the matter to the attention of his superiors.

Mr Ed O'Callaghan told Mr Richard Nesbitt SC, for the Department of Transport Energy and Communications, that he never felt under any such pressure nor had he ever felt that he was being overborne by anybody in relation to his work.

He said the secretary general of the department at the time, Mr John Loughrey, had an open-door policy but that anyway "if something along the lines of what you have postulated had occurred", he would have gone to him. "Any civil servant" who felt they were coming under improper pressure would have "immediately blown the whistle".

Mr O'Callaghan rejected the suggestion of Mr John Coughlan SC, for the tribunal, that he was "embarrassed" by a document which he drafted at the time of the competition and which set out a chronology of events up to the announcement of the winner by then minister, Mr Michael Lowry.

Mr O'Callaghan said it was not the case that he was now giving a version of the document which did not accord with the text contained in it. He stood over the document and repeated his evidence that the concern expressed in it related to the report of the project team rather than to the result the team arrived at in relation to the winning bid.

He told the chairman, Mr Justice Moriarty, that he had no grounds for querying the result of the competition.

Mr Eoghan Fitzsimons SC, for Telenor, said the implication of the questions which had been put to Mr O'Callaghan was that the document was intended to be some sort of "insurance policy" for Mr O'Callaghan if he was questioned later about the competition. He suggested that the document was no such thing. Mr O'Callaghan agreed. If it was a more serious document he would have typed it up and edited it.

He agreed that he would have put a date on it if he had intended the use being suggested for the document. He did not date it because he felt it was "a personal note" created to assist his memory of events. He told Mr Coughlan that the only embarrassment he felt in relation to the document was in relation to its "inelegance and appalling grammar".

He never sought privilege for the document, he simply sought legal advice as to whether it was privileged or not. He was happy to help the tribunal. When he was asked for the document he handed it over.

A former colleague of Mr O'Callaghan on the project team, Mr Sean McMahon, has begun giving evidence and will continue today.