Civil servant says Esat bid may have been fast-tracked

The senior civil servant who chaired the team which selected the winner of the 1995 mobile phone licence competition has said his professional reputation would not be impugned if the process was influenced in a way about which he could not have had knowledge at the time.

Mr Martin Brennan was responding to Mr Jerry Healy SC, for the tribunal. Mr Healy said someone who was armed with the true picture in relation to the Esat Digifone consortium in the latter part of the process, could have sought to rush the process at that stage so that the consortium would not be subjected to further scrutiny.

Mr Brennan agreed that such a move could occur without his being aware of the fact. The tribunal has heard that in the latter part of the process the then minister for transport, energy and communications, Mr Michael Lowry, asked that the process be accelerated.

Mr Brennan agreed that the Digifone bid which was submitted to the department was not a bid from Mr Denis O'Brien, Mr Dermot Desmond and the Norwegian company Telenor. The tribunal has heard that on September 29th, 1995, just under a month before the result of the competition was announced, Mr Desmond took up 20 per cent of the consortium.

Mr Brennan told the tribunal chairman that he was informed that a letter had been received on September 29th, 1995, in relation to the Digifone consortium but he was not told that the letter concerned the involvement of Mr Desmond's company, IIU Ltd, in the consortium.

Mr Justice Moriarty said the letter could have contained critical information about the then frontrunner in the licence competition. Mr Brennan said his colleague, Mr Fintan Towey, who had received the letter, was a very experienced civil servant on whose judgment he would rely. Mr Towey had recommended that the letter should be returned as the time for submissions had passed. Mr Brennan had agreed with this.

Mr Brennan told Mr Richard Nesbitt SC, for the Department of Communications, that he did not believe he was every subjected to any attempt to influence his work on assessing the bids for the licence. Nor did he believe that he had been subjected to any pressure to influence his work when he was involved in the negotiations with Esat Digifone which preceded the issuing of the licence.

He said that during his work on the process he acted independently to the best of his ability and was not overborne by any third party.

The tribunal heard that at a meeting in Copenhagen on September 28th, 1995, it emerged that the grades which had been given to the various aspects of the bids received, could not be processed in a way which would show which bid was the best.

At Mr Brennan's suggestion grades of A to E were changed to numbers 1 to 5. The results were then multiplied according to the weightings which had been assigned to the various criteria. At the end of this process, which took most of the morning, a result emerged showing Esat Digifone was the best bid.

Mr Brennan and Mr Towey were at the meeting, as well as some representatives of the Danish consultancy firm, Andersen Management International. The results and the method used to arrive at the result, were subsequently explained to the other members of the assessment team back in Dublin.

Mr Brennan finished his evidence yesterday after 20 days in the witness box.