Official says he was not party to concealment

Moriarty tribunal A senior member of the team which selected the winner of the 1995 mobile phone licence competition said he was not a party to any exercise in concealment.

Mr Fintan Towey was responding to Mr John Coughlan SC, for the tribunal, in relation to the fact that a portion of a table showing marks scored by the bidders for the licence was dropped from a later draft of the team's final report.

Mr Towey said he could not recall the reason for deciding to drop part of the table, but suggested that the team could have been unhappy with the scores.

He said he was not part of any exercise in concealment. He would have no cause to be party to any such exercise. He could see a number of explanations for the change "apart from your favourite one".

Mr Coughlan said he did not have a favourite explanation. The report was made more opaque as a result of the decision to drop part of the table.

Mr Towey said he was "quite positive" that the dropping of the data was not for the purposes of concealment. He believed there was a reason for the decision, though it was not clear from the report. There was a difference between opacity and concealment. He could not recall any discussion concerning the decision.

Mr Towey agreed that it was unfortunate for the inquiry that there was no record of why certain weightings used by the assessment team were broken down in the way they were, but he believed there had been a good reason for doing so, and that nothing sinister was involved.

Mr Coughlan said if different decisions had been made in relation to the breakdown of the weightings within the most important criteria, market development, then Persona would have come out on top of Esat Digifone in that criteria.

He asked was it the case that if the then minister, Mr Michael Lowry, had not been putting on pressure for the wrapping up of the process, the team could have considered matters in a calm and considered way.

Mr Towey said if they had taken longer they might have written a clearer report, but he did not believe that the team was working under undue pressure.

Mr Coughlan said to this day there seemed to be confusion within the team in relation to the breakdown of the weightings. The assessment process originally envisaged a qualitative and a quantitative analysis of the bids. However, the quantitative analysis was subsequently dropped.

Mr Towey said the quantitative analysis was dropped because it was discovered to be "wholly inadequate".

However, Mr Coughlan said the analysis had given a top ranking to Persona and the qualitative analysis had produced a ranking where Persona came a very close second. He asked how, then, it could be concluded that the analysis was inadequate.

Mr Towey said the analysis was very restricted.

Mr Towey is to resume his evidence today.