EXPERT'S TESTIMONY:A DANISH consultant has said he believes a meeting described in evidence some years ago never occurred.
Prof Michael Andersen of AMI, which acted as consultant to the Department of Communications for the 1995 mobile phone licence competition, said he had checked with one of his colleagues and he could not remember the meeting either.
Some years ago, senior civil servants Martin Brennan and Fintan Towey told the tribunal about a meeting with Prof Andersen in the AMI offices in Copenhagen in late September 1995.
They told the tribunal that qualitative grades given to the bids for the licence were converted into scores, and weightings then applied to those scores. In this way, a final ranking for the bids emerged, they said. The tribunal was told of the use of whiteboards and flip charts when the exercise was being conducted.
However, Prof Andersen told Michael McDowell SC, for the tribunal, that he had no recollection of such a meeting. His records indicated he was in Sweden around this time. He thought there had been a conference call.
There had been meetings in Copenhagen on September 18th and 19th, attended by members of the Irish project assessment team, at which final rankings emerged.
Prof Andersen said the assessment of the bids involved a holistic approach. There were to be quantitative and qualitative assessments. The quantitative were to inform the qualitative, but were not to be determinative.
Problems with the quantitative evaluation – to do with comparing the information submitted by the bidders – meant it “withered away”.
The civil servants then suggested converting the grades or letters used in the qualitative evaluation to numbers or scores.
He said the idea arose at the meetings on the 18th and 19th. AMI did not disagree even though the use of numbers “distorted” the idea of a qualitative evaluation. He thought Mr Brennan proposed the idea because he felt the outcome was easier to comprehend if figures were used instead of grades.
Prof Andersen said there was a clear result and it was agreed unanimously by the group. There were 17 civil servants involved, and seven consultants.
The result was not a “neck-and-neck” finish but rather the winner was a horse length ahead of the next ranked bid, Prof Andersen said.
At one stage when Mr McDowell was pressing Prof Andersen on his evidence, Bill Shipsey SC, for Dermot Desmond, complained he was acting in an adversarial manner. Prof Andersen said he did not think Mr McDowell was “coming at me in a neutral manner”. He said he was giving evidence under oath. “You weren’t there,” he said to Mr McDowell. Prof Andersen will continue his evidence today.