January 1989, and the cream of Irish broadcasting and business gather in the National Concert Hall. The first national commercial radio licence is the prize and Denis O'Brien, Oliver Barry and Chris Cary are three of the main contenders for the "licence to print money".

At this stage, Cary is the best-known figure, thanks to his pirate activities. Barry is the concert promoter who brought the likes of Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis junior to Ireland. O'Brien, the youngest of the three, is a relative unknown.

Fate can be unkind and unpredictable. Who would have thought that the franchise would turn out to be a poisoned chalice? Or that its award to Barry's Century Radio would become the subject of a yearlong investigation over a decade later? Or that O'Brien would acquire riches beyond the imagination of anyone in the hall on that frosty day in 1989?

Century was awarded the licence within days. But the licence to print money turned into a licence to haemorrhage money. Gay Byrne changed his mind about joining, Century's signal couldn't be picked up in half of the State and the advertisers stayed away.

The station started low and headed downhill. Within 22 months, it was gone. Barry lost millions and took years to recover.

Just when he had, there was a sting in the tail. In May 1989, Barry had given his friend Ray Burke, then Minister for Communications, £35,000 in cash. The payment emerged last year when the Flood tribunal was investigating other matters.

For Barry, it was a nightmare revisited. The entire disaster was dredged up.

But what of the losers in 1989? While Chris Cary returned to piracy, Denis O'Brien had kept a second oar in the water. A month after losing out to Century, his bid for a radio licence in Dublin was successful. The outcome was unsuccessfully disputed in the courts but O'Brien's 98FM was soon on air, making money.

Radio has provided the springboard for O'Brien's success. He replicated the pared-down, music hits formula used by 98FM in stations opened in Eastern Europe. He used the resulting cashflow to build up a war-chest for future ventures. In October 1995, he won his second big State contract, this time to set up the second mobile telephone network.

O'Brien got the licence for £15 million and sold his stake in Esat Telecom three years later for a personal profit of £230 million. He is the consummation of the Celtic Tiger, yet his rise has been accompanied by controversy. Currently, the award of the mobile licence by Fine Gael minister Michael Lowry is under intense scrutiny, after it was claimed that O'Brien organised a political donation of £50,000 to Fine Gael shortly afterwards - an allegation that he denies. The source of this money is disputed.