THE PUBLICATION of the long-awaited report of the Moriarty tribunal is to be further delayed after the tribunal chairman Mr Justice Michael Moriarty yesterday decided to call new witnesses.
Taoiseach Brian Cowen told the Dáil last week that the report would be out in March but it is now unlikely to be published before April, at the earliest.
A number of parties were told yesterday that officials from the Office of the Attorney General are to be called.
Last November Mr Cowen told the Dáil the report would be published in January. Provisional findings were sent out to affected parties in December 2008. The tribunal threatened to injunct The Irish Timesif it published the findings.
A number of parties had been pressing the tribunal to call the witnesses to address one of the key aspects of Mr Justice Moriarty’s findings in regard to the granting of a mobile phone licence to Denis O’Brien’s Esat Digifone in 1996.
The finding concerns the legality of the issuing of the licence, given that the make-up of the consortium that was issued the licence was different to that which applied for the licence.
Businessman Dermot Desmond became a 20 per cent shareholder in the consortium in the intervening period.
In July last year Richard Nesbitt SC told the tribunal he had a “crystal clear” recollection of giving oral advice to the effect that the licence could be issued. Mr Justice Moriarty has since issued a provisional finding arising from Mr Nesbitt’s evidence and from written legal advice from Mr Nesbitt drafted in 1996 but withheld from the tribunal by the Department of Communications, until after the November 2008 provisional findings were circulated.
The department then lifted the legal professional privilege it had up to then been asserting.
The officials from the Attorney General’s Office, which sought legal advice from Mr Nesbitt at the time, will now be asked if they have any recall of being given oral advice by Mr Nesbitt. The officials involved are John Gormley and Denis McFadden.
Some parties are understood to be pressing that the then attorney general, Dermot Gleeson SC, should be called.
The matter of the advice given to the State at the time is crucial as it affects a key issue concerning whether the then minister, Michael Lowry, interfered with the process so as to encourage the granting of the licence to Esat Digifone. Mr Justice Moriarty’s report will also be addressing the issue of whether Mr Lowry received any financial benefits from Mr O’Brien.
The tribunal has sat 19 times since June 2007, yet it is understood to continue to employ its legal staff. Senior counsel Jerry Healy and John Coughlan are paid €1,955 per day each, including VAT, with other members of the team being paid lesser amounts. The cost of the tribunal, to the end of January, was €38.7 million.
It is likely to cost a multiple of that when third-party legal costs are eventually paid out.
