Witness unaware data was altered

The chairman of the team which selected the winner of the State's second mobile phone licence competition told the tribunal that he had never noticed before that a record of a decision made by the team had been altered.

Mr Martin Brennan agreed that it was "disturbing" that a table outlining agreed sub-weightings, to be used by the group when assessing bids for the licence, had been changed in the team's final report.

The change meant that the table coincided with particular sub-weightings actually used during a meeting of members of the team in Copenhagan in late September 1995.

Mr Brennan had attended the meeting in Copenhagen along with another civil servant, Mr Fintan Towey. They had met one or more consultants from the Danish consultancy firm Andersen Management International, which was advising the assessment team.

During the meeting, the men had assessed the bids in relation to particular aspects of their submissions. While doing so, they used sub-weightings which differed from those which had been agreed during a meeting of the assessment team in June.

Mr Brennan said that if he had noticed at the time that the historical record had been changed in the team's final report he would have done something about it then. However, he had not been aware of the change until it was brought to his attention by the tribunal.

He said he could not recall how he and Mr Towey came to use the sub-weightings used in Copenhagen. In general, the weightings and sub-weightings used by the team were suggested by the consultants and either accepted or amended by the team as a whole.

Mr Brennan has returned to give further evidence following the hearing of evidence from most members of the assessment team over the past few months. He was in the witness-box for a number of weeks during December 2002 and January of this year. He will continue his evidence today.