Cablelink sale party put on ice

Some days Mary O'Rourke must wonder why her life must always be so complicated. No sooner had the Minister for Public Enterprise extricated herself from the chaos surrounding the heralded arrival and abrupt departure of Brian Thompson at the helm of Telecom Eireann as it faces into the privatisation process than she has found companies under her wing in the High Court over the sale of Cablelink - ironically owned in large part by Telecom.

She will not have been surprised to see Telecom's old sparring partner, Denis O'Brien's Esat, resorting to litigation over alleged breaches of the tendering process.

Mind you, it is easy to see why Esat would move with such haste. To lose Cablelink, a piece of the jigsaw seen as essential to promoting Esat as a group able to compete effectively across the full range of telecoms services, would be bad enough. Discovering effectively that the home-grown operation never had a chance because of the structure of the winning NTL bid - which guaranteed to pay more than its nearest rival, no matter what the figure - must grate, whatever about the truth or otherwise of allegations of bidrigging being made against NTL by Esat.