A management consultant to CIE said yesterday he was insulted by suggestions that he failed to co-operate with an Oireachtas sub-committee investigating a £36 million overrun in the company's rail signalling project.
There were heated exchanges between sub-committee chairman Mr Sean Doherty TD and the witness, Mr Leslie Buckley, when the question of Mr Buckley's co-operation arose.
It emerged the sub-committee has failed to secure documents it sought from Mr Buckley, who has claimed the order to hand over the documents is invalid.
Mr Paul Gardiner, representing Mr Buckley, intervened to remind the sub-committee that the issue was the subject of ongoing correspondence between them and his client's solicitors and said it should not be raised in public session.
But if the sub-committee was going to get into a "slagging match", he wanted it on record that they had left three boxes of documents with Mr Buckley's neighbour and expected his client to review them. He received them four days later.
The inquiry had heard Mr Buckley was employed as a consultant between May and December 1996 to examine ways of reducing costs at Iarnrod Eireann, for which he was paid between £300,000 and £350,000.
Among his recommendations were less frequent painting of train carriages, less frequent general repairs and refurbishments, contracting out work and cutting jobs.
On previous days, the inquiry had heard evidence the company was working under severe financial constraints when it signed a £15.7 million contract for the rail signalling project in mid-1997.
The unfinished project initially had a £14 million budget and is expected to cost a total of £50 million to complete.
But Mr Buckley rejected as "ridiculous" a suggestion by Mr Pat Rabbitte TD that he contributed to a situation where the focus was so much on cost reduction that management imposed "unwise decisions" on engineers.
He said his plan was reviewed by two safety experts. There were further terse exchanges when Mr Buckley was questioned about the fee for his consultancy work and whether he habitually resided in the State, a question the sub-committee agreed to drop.
He was ordered back before the inquiry at a later date to give full details of all the company directorships he currently holds and held in the past.
Later in yesterday's session, Mr Bill Shipsey, barrister for Alstom Ltd, which owns Sasib, a company that shared the signalling contract, asked for assurances that a previous suggestion that Sasib had in some way made threats if its tender was not successful, would not be repeated to Alstom witnesses due to give evidence today.
Mr Doherty said he was satisfied there was no evidence or document that gave credibility to that suggestion.