British Telecom warned shareholders this week that there was no assurance its Irish subsidiary, Esat, would not lose its mobile licence due to revelations at the Moriarty Tribunal.
The award of the licence in 1995 by the then minister for transport, energy and communications, Mr Michael Lowry, is being investigated by the tribunal.
BT paid $3.7 billion for Esat in 2000 in a deal whose principal beneficiaries included its then chairman, Mr Denis O'Brien, who lives in Portugal for tax purposes.
Just three days after BT warned of negative publicity arising from the tribunal at Dublin Castle, a serious conflict of evidence emerged elsewhere about Esat's construction of a land-based telecoms system on the CI╔ rail network.
In a cramped room on Kildare Street, a separate inquiry by an Oireachtas sub-committee heard that CI╔ had no knowledge of a "signed letter of intent" to Esat which was cited three times in the prospectus for its flotation in November 1997.
The revelation on Thursday by CI╔'s solicitor, Mr Michael Carroll, that he could find no trace of such a letter, came as something of a surprise. Only hours earlier, Mr O'Brien had claimed to the inquiry that the letter, which anticipated its deal with CI╔, was not a cornerstone of Esat's flotation.
Minutes after the hearing opened, Mr O'Brien claimed Mr Seβn Doherty TD was unfit to chair the sub-committee of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Public Enterprise and Transport, which was established to find out why the projected cost of a new signalling system for lesser used lines on the railway spiralled to more than £50 million from £14 million in 1995.
Mr O'Brien said Mr Doherty was interested only in "abusing" witnesses, adding that he should not be chairman because of his links to a phone-tapping scandal 20 years ago when he was minister for justice in a government led by Mr Charles Haughey.
Mr Doherty said Mr O'Brien's statement was outrageous. Yet the comments were repeated in a press release published by Mr O'Brien's PR team, 30 minutes after he left the inquiry.
Since hearings began three weeks ago, the inquiry has heard claims that work on the Esat system undermined progress on the signalling project, which is still incomplete almost two years after the target for European Commission funding was passed.
Yet overruns on State projects are relatively common. For example, the Comptroller and Auditor General revealed this week that operating expenditure for the Garda helicopter unit in 1997-2000 was £7.25 million, more than six times the £1.17 million projection.
What has engaged the attention of the sub-committee investigating the signalling project, however, is a striking series of overlapping relationships between those working for CI╔, its contractors and consultants, and Esat.
The subcommittee has heard that Mr O'Brien's close associate, Mr Leslie Buckley, worked simultaneously as a consultant to CI╔'s rail subsidiary, Iarnr≤d ╔ireann, and as a director of Esat, up to four weeks before he commenced negotiations for Esat with CI╔ in January 1997. Mr Buckley, who also lives in Portugal, has told the subcommittee he never discussed "infrastructure" at Esat while he compiled a 24-page cost saving plan in Iarnr≤d ╔ireann for which he was paid £300,000-£350,000. The plan was "typed up" in Iarnr≤d ╔ireann, he said.
The inquiry has also heard that CI╔'s director of programmes and projects in 1997, Dr Ray Byrne, who was a driving force behind the telecoms initiative, also worked simultaneously for the transport group and for Esat. Dr Byrne has said the agreement was a good one for CI╔ and for the State and that his work for Esat was not connected to his role in CI╔. He informed the transport group of his dual role.
Appointed to CI╔ in 1995 after 21 years in the civil service, Dr Byrne was one of "six of the best" recruited to beef up CI╔'s management. He arrived shortly after his friend and former civil service colleague, the late Mr Michael McDonnell, was made group chief executive.
Mr McDonnell, who died in April, was recruited when Mr Lowry was minister.
Mr Lowry, his successor as minister, Mr Alan Dukes, and the Minister for Public Enterprise, Ms O'Rourke, are all expected to be called to the inquiry.
There were other links between CI╔ and its contractors. A report commissioned by Mr Carroll from the consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) highlighted the award of the signalling contract to an association involving a Dublin firm Modern Networks Ltd (MNL) and an Italian company Sasib. That report, which ultimately prompted the inquiry, was commissioned in contemplation of litigation.
It noted that three CI╔ figures crucial to the award of the signalling contract had left the transport group to join MNL. In evidence given in the first two weeks of the inquiry, Mr Brian Powell, Mr Bernard Kernan and Ms Mary Hand have all sought to vindicate their actions, stating that their names had been in the public domain for a year before they were given an opportunity to respond to the report. While Mr Powell has made damning reference to the PwC report as work worthy of "rank amateurs", all three have said they were not interviewed by the accounting firm.
One report on the overrun was spiked by Iarnr≤d ╔ireann's secretary, Mr Richard O'Farrell, at the request of Mr McDonnell.
Others figures claimed to have no responsibility in particular areas when certain questions were put to them. For example CI╔'s chief financial officer, Mr Jim Cullen, claimed his job was to monitor expenditure, but not costs. Mr Cullen, the most senior financial executive in CI╔, had no knowledge of the overrun on the 1997 project until July 1999. He is the only figure from the "six of the best" group not to have left CI╔.
Either way, the focus of the sub-committee is now firmly on CI╔'s connections with Esat. The agreement allowed for licence revenues of £1-£2 million per annum. Such figures are not insubstantial, but they would never relieve CI╔ of its funding difficulty - it received more than £160 million in subventions from the State last year.
As Mr Doherty pointed out in an opening statement last month, the deal meant Esat could construct a lucrative asset on State property at a crucial phase in its development. What is more, the agreement breached the transport group's own procurement policy.
The view outlined by Mr Carroll yesterday was that the group would have sold its soul to Esat if had accepted the first draft of a heads of agreement document provided by the telecoms company. If Esat got its way, he said, it would crawl all over CI╔'s infrastructure.
Whereas CI╔ had contacts with a number of other telecoms companies in 1997 that were still open at that stage, Mr Carroll believed a decision had already been made to do a deal with Esat.
In a note written to Mr Carroll after he was supplied with the draft document, Mr Grogan said he had received a phone call from Dr Byrne. In that call, Dr Byrne said the "matter" had been "largely agreed" with himself; Mr McDonnell; CI╔'s then chairman, Mr Brian Joyce; and had been "cleared" by Mr Cullen.
The subcommittee sits again on Monday. Its hearings have been akin to the piecing together of a number of jigsaws all at once. Slowly, however, a picture is emerging.