TD did not recall O'Brien meeting

PHIL HOGAN:FINE GAEL TD Phil Hogan told the Moriarty tribunal he had no memory of a meeting with Denis O'Brien in mid-October 1995, days before the awarding of the second mobile phone licence to the businessman's consortium.

Mr Hogan, who was the chair of Fine Gael’s fundraising efforts and is now Minister for the Environment, said the meeting did not take place or, if it did, he had no recollection of being present, the tribunal report says.

He was responding to evidence from businessman and Fine Gael trustee Mark FitzGerald, who said he was surprised when arriving for a scheduled meeting with Mr O’Brien at a restaurant to find Mr Hogan and another Fine Gael TD, the late Jim Mitchell, also there.

Mr O’Brien also told the tribunal he had no recollection of any such meeting, but Mr FitzGerald stood by his evidence.

The tribunal report did not adjudicate on the divergence in testimony between Mr FitzGerald and Mr Hogan and Mr O’Brien.

However, it described Mr FitzGerald’s evidence as “composed, coherent, dispassionate and moderate”, especially when he was being cross-examined by Mr O’Brien’s lawyers.

The report reprints a letter written by Mr Hogan to Mr O’Brien on Dáil notepaper in August 1995, in which he expresses his delight that the businessman had agreed to sponsor the Fine Gael golf classic.

Mr Hogan said the £4,000 would be used to sponsor a hole and wine for dinner and that “appropriate advertising will be utilised”.

A week later, he asked Mr O’Brien to send on a disk with his company’s logo for the ads. However, in October, Sarah Carey, who was then working as a marketing co-ordinator for Mr O’Brien, told Mr Hogan that her employer had requested there be no references to his contribution at the event.

Mr Hogan told the tribunal that as chairman of the fundraising committee, he would have written to sponsors but in doing so he merely signed letters prepared by the Fine Gael secretariat.

He would have written to Mr O’Brien a couple of times about becoming a sponsor, but was not aware of his wish for no publicity.

Mr Hogan said the first time he met Mr O’Brien was at a fundraising lunch for the Wicklow byelection in June 1995. This arose from contact between him and Ms Carey, whose father was a long-time Fine Gael councillor known to Mr Hogan.

Mr O’Brien attended and contributed £5,000, which Mr Hogan handed on to the local constituency association.

Mr Hogan also recalled getting £1,000 at a fundraising lunch in his Carlow-Kilkenny constituency in March 1995, but could not remember if Mr O’Brien was there. Other than these, he had no dealings with Mr O’Brien.