CIE's relationship with businessman Mr Leslie Buckley came under scrutiny yesterday at an Oireachtas inquiry into a £36 million overrun on a rail signalling project begun in 1997.
The rise from 14 million to £50 million in the cost of the incomplete signalling system has been linked to the parallel construction of a telecoms network on the railway for Esat Telecom. Mr Buckley's appearance yesterday centred on consulting work he carried out at Iarnrod Eireann between May and December 1996, shortly before he became Esat's acting chief executive. Months later he negotiated a deal for Esat that secured its access to the railway.
That agreement was crucial to Esat because its system on the railway enabled it to cease leasing telecom lines from Eircom, then Telecom Eireann.
Indeed, a subcommittee of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Public Enterprise and Transport has heard the system proved to be an asset of considerable value to Esat when it was sold in 2000 to British Telecom.
In addition, the PricewaterhouseCoopers study that led to the to inquiry's establishment suggested Iarnrod's divestiture to Esat of access to the railway breached its own procurement policy.
So Mr Buckley is an important witness. If the questions he faced yesterday smacked more of opening gambit than grandmaster engagement on the bigger issues, nuggets of information still emerged.
There was evidence also of a tetchy relationship with the inquiry, chaired by Mr Sean Doherty TD. Twice Mr Buckley's counsel, Mr Paul Gardiner SC, intervened. First, he disputed questions about Mr Buckley's co-operation with orders for the discovery of documents and revealed the inquiry had delivered three boxes containing 10,000 pages of documentation to his neighbour.
Second, he argued that Mr Buckley should not be required to answer a question about where he was domiciled. Mr Buckley didn't answer that question, put to him by Mr Pat Rabbitte TD.
He was hired in April 1996 to carry out a radical review of costs after taking a telephone call from CIE's then non-executive chairman, Mr Brian Joyce, who inquired as to his availability for job. Mr Joyce was known to him, although they had no face-to-face meeting. Instead, Mr Buckley dealt with CIE's finance director, Mr Jim Cullen, and its then chief executive, the late Mr Michael McDonnell.
The fee Mr Buckley received for eight months work, with the aid of associates, was £300,000 to £350,000. As he described it, the role was to act as a "catalyst" to Iarnrod's management in the drive for cost efficiency.
In contrast to the £2.2 billion National Development Plan investment in transport now under way, the signalling saga developed when Iarnrod was under severe financial pressure. So acute were the company's funding difficulties that Mr Buckley sought savings by halting refurbishment work on its ageing rolling stock.
More relevant to the inquiry were the £6.5 million in savings he ordered from procurement. It was in that environment that Iarnrod reached agreement with its two subcontractors, the Dublin firm Modern Networks Ltd and its Italian partner, Sasib. A great deal of time has been spent since the inquiry opened last week on the formulation of those contracts, designed to save costs. But Mr Buckley stressed yesterday he was not involved in implementation.
Ironically, Mr Buckley's contract was not put to tender. At the inquiry yesterday, Iarnrod's former head of procurement, Mr Brian Powell, said such a procedure would leave him "somewhat surprised". He added, however, that Mr Buckley was a respected figure.
Mr Buckley rejected descriptions of his study as the "Buckley report", stating it was the report of the company's management, who endorsed its conclusions. He was based at Connolly Station when at Iarnrod and the 24-page report was "typed up" within the company.