Analysis: A lengthy opening statement has disclosed several matters of concern to the Moriarty tribunal, writes Colm Keena, who summarises some of the main points from an eventful week
The Moriarty tribunal is in the course of reading out the longest opening statement it has delivered yet and one that outlines what it has discovered during a confidential inquiry which has been going on for more than a year.
The opening statement has so far disclosed a number of matters which the tribunal believes are a cause for concern in relation to the 1995 second mobile phone licence competition.
The project group, which was to decide which of the six bidders should be awarded the licence, was supposed to have conducted a "sealed process", with the details of its work remaining confidential to the members of the group.
The key issue is whether this was indeed the case.
Tribunal counsel Mr John Coughlan SC is to resume reading out the opening statement on Tuesday and is likely to go on reading for a few days thereafter.
The following is a brief summary of some of the main points so far.
The letters
The tribunal has discovered that a letter from EU Competition Commissioner Mr Karel Van Miert to Mr Michael Lowry, sent on July 14th, 1995, was in the hands of a solicitor working for Mr Denis O'Brien's company, Esat Telecom, within 10 days. The tribunal has been told the letter was probably given to the solicitor by someone in the Commission.
It is not known if other bidders for the licence had the same letter, which was supposedly highly confidential.
The letter disclosed that a weighting of less than 15 per cent would be given to one of the listed criteria to be used for assessing the winning bid. The bidders knew the criteria and their order of importance but not their relative importance or weight.
Mr Owen O'Connell - a solicitor with William Fry solicitors, acting for Mr O'Brien and his holding company, Communicorp - sent a letter on June 20th, 1995, in which he mentioned discussions between Mr Michael Lowry's Department, the Department of Transport, Energy and Communications, and the Commission in relation to the licence competition.
At issue was the fee to be charged for the new licence, the item which was to be given a weighting of less than 15 per cent. Mr O'Connell cited two options which the Department was considering and the tribunal is now investigating his source for this information.
To date he has not been able to find any document which would shed light on the matter. Mr O'Brien has said on RTÉ that around this time the Department was briefing journalists as to what was happening. He and a few of his colleagues had been in for a meeting with the Department around this time but the minutes of the meeting do not show the points made by Mr O'Connell being discussed.
Mr Michael Lowry
Mr Lowry, who was not involved in the selection process, was told by his civil servants to be very careful about meetings with representatives of bidding consortiums during the competition process. Yet he met Mr Tony Boyle, a leading light of one of the consortiums, Persona, in a hotel bar in Killiney, Co Dublin, specifically to discuss the licence competition and in the absence of civil servants. He also met Mr O'Brien. The two men have said they bumped into each other in Croke Park on the day of the All-Ireland football final in September 1995. Mr O'Brien asked Mr Lowry where he would be later and the two men subsequently met up for a pint in Hartigan's pub on Leeson Street. Mr Per Simonsen, of Telenor, Esat Telecom's partner in the Digifone bid, has told the tribunal that Mr O'Brien told him that, during the meeting in the pub, the minister suggested that Digifone get Mr Dermot Desmond's International Investment and Underwriting Ltd, involved. Mr Lowry and Mr O'Brien have denied this.
Sir Anthony O'Reilly
The chairman of Independent News & Media has said that during a brief encounter at a September 1995 function in Co Tipperary, Mr Lowry told him that representatives of a consortium Independent was involved in had not done well during an oral presentation the previous day. Mr Lowry has denied saying this. Mr Lowry has said that Sir Anthony was annoyed when his consortium, Irish Cellular Telephones, did not win the bid and that this was one of the matters he complained about to the then taoiseach, Mr John Bruton, in the summer of 1996. Sir Anthony says it was not one of the issues he complained about. The Rainbow Coalition felt that Independent newspapers' political coverage reflected Sir Anthony's dislike of the Government, Mr Lowry has said.
Mr Dermot Desmond
According to Mr Desmond and Mr O'Brien, the two men first discussed Mr Desmond backing Digifone in August 1995, when the two men went to see Glasgow Celtic playing in Glasgow. The deal was signed between the two men on Sept 29th, 1995. The tribunal has found documents from September 1995 showing Mr O'Brien was worried that the Department believed the financial aspect of his bid was weak at the same time as confidential assessments being made by the project group were mentioning the same topic. When a letter was sent into the Department on Sept 29th so as to advise the project group of the involvement of International Investment and Underwriting, Mr Desmond's compnay, an official decided the closing date for submissions was passed. The letter was returned.