The famous 1995 donation by Telenor/Esat Digifone to Fine Gael has surely already cost the taxpayer more in tribunal legal fees than the $50,000 donated.
Yesterday a "most private and confidential" letter from the late Mr David Austin to the then minister, Mr Michael Lowry, was shown on the overhead projector. Dated July 1995, it contained a detailed outline from Mr Austin of his idea for a New York fund-raiser to be attended by the then Taoiseach, Mr John Bruton, a scattering of Fine Gael ministers, including Mr Lowry, and the Fine Gael supporter, Mr Peter Sutherland.
The letter ran to two pages and ended by saying Mr Austin looked forward to discussing the idea with Mr Lowry. Mr Lowry was at the time a significant figure in the Fine Gael fund-raising machine, as well as a friend of Mr Austin. Mr Austin was a senior Smurfit executive and a Fine Gael fund-raiser.
Along with his letter Mr Austin included a list of proposed targets. Invitees were to be asked to donate, at minimum, $7,500. In the event he told Fine Gael more than $167,000 was raised. This did not include the $50,000 received from Esat/ Telenor.
Yet the donation was apparently made in connection with the dinner. Mr Austin asked Mr O'Brien to attend the dinner just a few weeks beforehand. In late October 1995 Mr Lowry had announced that Esat Digifone had won the competition for the second mobile phone licence. One to two weeks later Mr Austin contacted Mr O'Brien - a long-time friend - and asked him to contribute to the New York fund-raiser.
Mr O'Brien thought that, given the proximity of the licence announcement, it would be inappropriate for his company, Esat Telecom, to donate. Esat Telecom was a major shareholder in Esat Digifone. For some reason yet to be explained, Mr O'Brien decided the other major shareholder in Esat Digifone, Norwegian company Telenor, might want to donate, despite such a payment being presumably just as inappropriate as any Esat Telecom might have made.
According to Mr Lowry, no one ever told him about the donation. We may never know why this was so. Before he died Mr Austin insisted to the then general secretary of Fine Gael, Mr Jim Miley, that Mr Lowry had no involvement in the donation. Mr Miley contacted Mr Austin in February 1998. Mr Austin told him the donation followed an approach to Mr O'Brien in relation to the New York dinner. In a typed file note of the conversation Mr Miley wrote: "He said that DOB (Mr O'Brien) indicated that he wished to have the donation paid via Telenor in order to ensure confidentiality."
Yesterday Mr O'Brien said he had never indicated any such thing to Mr Austin and that the donation was made by Telenor on its own behalf.
In a 1998 letter to Mr Michael Walsh of IIU Ltd, then a shareholder in Esat Digifone, Telenor executive Mr Arve Johansen said the $50,000 donation was made from Esat Digifone and at Mr O'Brien's request. Yesterday Mr O'Brien said the letter was "bottom covering", by which he meant a letter written by Telenor to get the Telenor files right in the context of (ill-fated) merger negotiations then under way between Telenor and Swedish communications company, Telia.
In other words, Telenor was placing documents in its files to bolster its version of the circumstances behind the $50,000 donation. Or, more directly, Telenor's account of events is untrue. Someone's account certainly is. Yet everyone insists that all that is involved is a perfectly legitimate, if circuitously paid, political donation.
Mr O'Brien yesterday said he blamed Fine Gael for the whole mess, because it made an approach for money at a wholly inappropriate time. Mr O'Brien is surely just as much to blame, given that he says he suggested to Mr Austin that Telenor might make a contribution, and then raised the matter with Telenor.
Today the former Taoiseach, Mr John Bruton, gives evidence.