Contractors for the troubled rail-signalling project were too busy fighting among themselves to concentrate on the job in hand, a senior Iarnrod Eireann engineer claimed.
Mr Ronan Finlayson, who was train control and communications engineer when the contract was awarded, told the inquiry that the plan itself was "excellent" but the contractors could not physically implement it.
"The energy seems to be going into internal rows between Sasib, MNL and Alstom," Mr Finlayson wrote to Mr Gerry Dalton, manager of infrastructure at Iarnrod Eireann.
At the time of the letter, in May 1999, Alstom were in the process of taking over Sasib which was sharing the signalling project with MNL (Modern Networks Ltd).
Mr Finlayson wrote that MNL had become involved in aspects of the contract for which they did not have sufficient expertise. "They have little or no comprehension of what is involved," he wrote. "I believe that MNL are totally out of their depth and have no way of delivering on the project."
The inquiry heard Mr Finlayson had serious reservations about the suitability of MNL and Sasib more than two years earlier when the contract was being finalised.
The two companies had never worked together before and it was not clear how they would share the project. MNL had cabling expertise but none in signalling while Sasib, an Italian firm, had signalling expertise but none in Britain or Ireland where procedures were different from where it was used to working.
Mr Finlayson was also concerned about the budget for the project as the £14 million envisaged was out of date by the time work began.
Another Iarnrod Eireann witness, Mr Rory O'Connor of the company's procurement department, said the board of CIE might not have appreciated the true cost of the project.
A draft paper he prepared for the board was later edited to omit the detailed reservations of engineers. Neither did it specifically mention that the price was based on an assumption that 95 per cent of the ground to be dug for the laying of cables could be dug mechanically rather than by hand, which later proved to be a serious overestimate.
Mr O'Connor said he did not know who had amended the paper.