A civil servant who was on the team which selected the winner of the State's second mobile phone licence competition has said there was "fairly hard argument" within the group over the adequacy of the final report.
However, Mr John McQuaid said he had no memory of the argument, including the issue of the correctness of the actual result.
He was giving evidence about events on October 23rd, 1995, two days before the result of the competition was announced by Mr Michael Lowry.
Mr McQuaid told Ms Jacqueline O'Brien, for the tribunal, that he could remember a meeting with the then secretary general of the Department of Transport, Energy and Communications, Mr John Loughrey, on October 23rd.
The meeting was attended by a number of members of the assessment team, who left the team's considerations of a draft final report to discuss the differences that had emerged within the group with Mr Loughrey.
At the meeting Mr Loughrey, who was not a member of the assessment team, was told of the opposing views which had emerged within the group. Mr McQuaid said he was in agreement with Mr Sean McMahon, who felt that more time was needed to work on the report. He said that was the view of the assessment team.
Ms O'Brien said it was Mr McMahon's evidence that he was unhappy with both the report and the result.
When Mr McQuaid read from the official report of the team's meeting of October 23rd, Ms O'Brien said the report was the shortest report of any of the team's meetings even though the meeting of October 23rd was one of the longest.
The tribunal heard that at a meeting on October 9th, the team was told that the intended quantitative assessment of the bids for the licence had been "undermined" because some of the criteria that were to have been assessed could not be assessed quantitatively.
Ms O'Brien said that the note of the meeting indicated that some members of the group wanted to keep to the evaluation model which had been agreed for the process, while others did not. In the event, the assessment went ahead in the absence of a quantitative report. The winning bid was selected on the basis of qualitative assessments only.
Mr McQuaid is to continue his evidence today. The tribunal chairman, Mr Justice Moriarty, said it was hoped all assessment team members would give evidence before the Easter recess.
