Ireland's reputation would be "literally destroyed" if it were proved beyond reasonable doubt that there was not "fair play" in the awarding of the State's second mobile phone licence to Mr Denis O'Brien's company Esat Telecom, the Tanaiste, Ms Mary Harney said last night.
Ms Harney was interviewed on RTE's The Week in Politics programme on former Fine Gael minister Mr Michael Lowry's decision to award the telecommunications licence to Esat and on revelations of his financial connections to Mr O'Brien which emerged at the Moriarty tribunal last week.
The Tanaiste said it would be a "nightmare scenario" if fair play did not exist in the awarding of the licence to Esat, because the other companies who bid for the licence might "come together and take a class action, and we could be talking about billions of pounds".
"I don't even want to think about it and I certainly hope it is not the case, but if it were to be proved beyond reasonable doubt that there was not fair play in the awarding of that licence, then I think the State would suffer, not just in terms of the financial monies we might have to pay out, but the reputation of Ireland would be literally destroyed," Ms Harney said.
Both the PDs and Fianna Fail had pursued the government at the time on the manner in which the Esat licence was awarded, Ms Harney said. A "relatively small" sum had been paid for the licence when other companies had been prepared to offer "substantially more".
Ireland had built a reputation to get foreign companies to invest here, on the basis that Ireland was a good society in which to do business, the Tanaiste added. She did not want to "play politics" with the matter, but any "fair person" looking at what happened last week "would have to be concerned".
She believed the matter was due to come before the Moriarty tribunal in a matter of weeks. It would be wrong to suggest that there was something wrong with the manner in which the Esat licence had been awarded, because that had not yet been established. There had been a lot of people involved who had reputations to defend, she said.
But if there was not an "open and transparent" regime in the way the licence was awarded, then the scenario for this country would be "very very serious".