Tribunal told of notes of meetings

The former chief executive of Esat Digifone thought in 1997 that if Mr Denis O'Brien had made a payment to Mr Michael Lowry, it would have been in relation to Esat Telecom.

Yesterday the tribunal saw notes taken by Mr Michael Walsh of IIU Nominees Ltd, a 20 per cent shareholder in Esat Digifone, covering a meeting between Mr Walsh and the former Digifone chief executive, Mr Barry Maloney.

They met on October 14th, 1996, to discuss concern within Esat Digifone that Mr O'Brien might have made a payment to Mr Lowry a year earlier.

According to Mr Walsh's notes, the two men discussed the awarding of a mobile phone licence to Digifone by Mr Michael Lowry a year earlier. Both "were convinced that all aspects of the licence award had been very professionally handled and would not have been open to influence".

Mr Maloney "was convinced that if DOB [Mr O'Brien] was doing anything with ML [Mr Lowry] that it was in relation to his other activities. DOB had been in and out of the minister's office all the time and each time he came out he had more routers or some concession which was at the minister's discretion."

Mr Maloney said yesterday that while he believed in 1997 that no payment had reached Mr Lowry, he did suspect that, as Mr O'Brien had said to him, a payment had been intended and had gone as far as a intermediary before it became "stuck".

Following a meeting between Mr O'Brien, Mr Walsh and Mr Maloney on October 13th, 1997, Mr O'Brien wrote a letter.

It read: "Dear Barry, I want to absolutely confirm that no money was paid by me or anyone acting on my behalf to Michael Lowry or any of his officials regarding the granting of the GSM licence to the Esat Digifone Consortium."

After the meeting, Mr Walsh told Mr Dermot Desmond of IIU he believed there was no room for political interference in the licence competition, given the quality of the civil servants.

A note of a meeting of Digifone directors on October 20th by Mr Walsh recorded Mr Mal oney as saying he was not going to be "the bad guy, that everything he had done has been above board. DOB/ML were very close (per BM) and all sorts of things were going on."