Applegreen’s Moore takes on his old colleagues

How interesting it was last week to see the Applegreen consortium launched legal action against Transport Infrastructure Ireland in an attempt to overturn the awarding of a contract for new motorway service stations to Topaz, which is owned by Denis O'Brien and his nephew, Emmet O'Neill.

Applegreen, which raised €70 million in a stock market listing in June, believes its consortium should be awarded the tender, which it lost in a tie-breaker on the thickness of footpaths.

It has lobbed in a High Court suit together with an affidavit from Eugene Moore, Applegreen's developments director, who is in charge of building out its network of service stations.

Moore is, of course, a former director of the National Roads Authority, the forerunner of Transport Infrastructure Ireland. He was a ministerial appointment to the NRA under the last Fianna Fáil-led government. I wonder how his old colleagues feel about Moore taking them to court?