Sir Anthony O'Reilly expressed dissatisfaction with the Rainbow Coalition in relation to at least four matters in which he had a commercial interest during a brief informal meeting in August 1996, the former taoiseach, Mr John Bruton, told the tribunal.
Sir Anthony is scheduled to give evidence to the tribunal on March 31st.
The tribunal heard that the meeting in west Cork was agreed following the two men meeting at a social reception in a house in Glandore, west Cork, close to where Sir Anthony had a home. The two men agreed to meet the next day in Sir Anthony's home.
Mr Bruton told Mr John Coughlan SC, for the tribunal, that Sir Anthony was mainly concerned about the government not taking action against TV deflector operators who were operating without a licence. Sir Anthony had an involvement with a company that had a licence to supply TV signals by way of the MMDS system.
Mr Bruton said that the chairman of Independent News & Media also expressed "some unhappiness" at the way the 1995 mobile phone licence competition had been run. Sir Anthony was associated with one of the losing bidders, Irish Cellular Telephones Ltd.
A letter from Mr Bruton's solicitors to the tribunal, based on information from Mr Bruton and Mr Seán Donlon, an adviser to the Rainbow government, listed four matters that had been causing unhappiness to Sir Anthony and that were mentioned to Mr Bruton during the Co Cork meeting.
These were: the TV deflector issue; grant assistance for a Heinz plant in the Co Louth region (Sir Anthony is a former president and chief executive of Heinz); access difficulties to a mine in the midlands in which Sir Anthony had an interest; and the awarding of the mobile phone licence to Mr Denis O'Brien notwithstanding the international competition.
He said Sir Anthony was "very dissatisfied" about the TV deflector situation. There had been considerable controversy about TV deflectors operating in defiance of the licensing system.
During a by-election campaign in Cork, Mr Bruton had said he would find a way to license deflectors but when he was subsequently in government he found this was not possible.
One reason he was happy to meet Sir Anthony was that he had hoped to persuade him to come to some arrangement with the deflector interests.
However, Sir Anthony was not interested in the proposal.
Mr Bruton told the tribunal Sir Anthony "expressed a general dissatisfaction about the way he and his interests were being recognised by the government and would have given some examples".
He asked Mr Donlon to see if he could do anything for Sir Anthony "in the areas in which proper discretion could be exercised".
He said the mention by Sir Anthony of the mobile phone licence process was more "an instance of his unhappiness" than something about which he was asking that something could be done.
The licence had already been issued by August 1996.
Mention of the matter had more to do with Sir Anthony's feeling of the "general underappreciation of the contribution he would be able to make", Mr Bruton said.