There was blood on the tracks at the rail-signalling inquiry yesterday when businessman Denis O'Brien was involved in a dramatic collision with the Oireachtas committee chairman, Sean Doherty.
The incident happened shortly after 10 a.m. when Mr Doherty, travelling in one direction, ran into Mr O'Brien, who was attempting to travel in another direction altogether.
There were no serious injuries but eye-witnesses, including committee member Pat Rabbitte, appeared shaken. The inquiry, which had threatened to go off the rails completely at one point, was operating normally by yesterday afternoon.
However, there was a second scare at about 11.30 a.m. when Mr O'Brien refused to apologise for earlier comments that Mr Doherty was "unfit" to be chairman. Mr Doherty offered him the opportunity to withdraw the comments: the signalling inquiry's equivalent of flashing a red light. But Mr O'Brien ploughed through the light and went after Mr Doherty like a runaway engine.
He had earlier left unsaid his reasons why the chairman was unfit, but they weren't unsaid this time. The telecommunications magnate argued it was Mr Doherty's own experience with telephones, ones belonging to journalists, that rendered him unsuitable. And there was more.
Mr Doherty had "abused" witnesses, he added, before the chairman pulled the cord on his train of thought and excused him from the rest of the session.
Mr O'Brien appeared unconcerned about the incidents as he stepped down and, speaking to reporters outside, stood calmly on the platform of his earlier comments. He had no problems with the committee - "outstanding parliamentarians" doing "excellent work". His problem was Mr Doherty. "I would be happy with another chairman," he said.
Mr O'Brien was not the only Esat witness to clash with the committee. A former director of the company, Leslie Buckley, also took frequent umbrage. A one-time consultant to CI╔, Mr Buckley led Esat's negotiations with the company over the use of its railway lines for the laying of fibre-optic cables. But it was the committee's lines of questioning he had problems with yesterday, and he suggested some of them should be closed for essential maintenance.
In a lighter exchange, he told Cork TD Noel O'Flynn of meeting Mr O'Brien through the radio business. Was that "96FM"? Mr O'Flynn asked, referring inadvertently to a Cork station. "98FM," corrected Mr Buckley, in an apt summary of a day when not only were the committee and witnesses getting their signals crossed, they were on different wavelengths as well.
After the morning's drama, the inquiry pulled into a siding in the afternoon, resuming the nuts-and-bolts examination of former CI╔ group property manager James Gahan. In answer to repetitive questioning, Mr Gahan repeated CI╔ was a "risk-averse" company. Bored by then, members of the gallery hoped the committee would ask him if he'd risk a verse of Are ye right there, Michael? But perhaps we'd had enough entertainment for one day.
