Accountant impressed by secrecy of bids process

THE MORIARTY TRIBUNAL: An accountant on temporary assignment to the Department of Finance in 1995, and who took part in the assessment of bids for the State's second mobile phone licence, told the tribunal he was impressed by the air of confidentiality that surrounded the process.

Mr Billy Riordan said the civil servants involved in the process were "very confidentiality-conscious" and that the process involved a level of confidentiality with which he was not familiar. He said that before the oral presentations made by the consortiums that bid for the licence, the room that was being used was swept for bugs. "I wasn't necessarily familiar with those sort of processes," he said.

Asked by Mr Jerry Healy SC, for the tribunal, whether he had spoken to anyone outside the process about the oral presentations, Mr Riordan said: "Absolutely categorically not."

He said he was not aware of anyone involved speaking with anyone outside the process. He said he would not have considered Mr Colin McCrea, programme manager to the then minister, Mr Michael Lowry, to be part of the team that assessed the bids.

Mr Riordan said he did not recall anyone presenting the views of the minister to any of the meetings held by the assessment team. A minute of one meeting recorded it being told the minister did not want the team's eventual report to undermine itself. Mr Riordan said he had no memory of this being said.

Another document shown to the tribunal recorded "unanimous support" being given by the team at a meeting on October 9th, 1995, for the results of the evaluations conducted until then, and for the Danish consultants, AMI, to go about drafting a final report. Mr Riordan noted beside the sentence that he did not agree that what was recorded had occurred at the October 9th meeting.

The eventual report showed that Esat Digifone, the winner, scored 432 marks in the assessment process. The second ranked bid, from the Persona consortium, scored 410 marks.

Mr Riordan is to resume his evidence today.