There would be big reductions in mobile telephone charges with the introduction of competition, the Minister for Transport, Energy and Communications said. Mr Lowry, who was responding to the Fianna Fail spokesman, Mr Seamus Brennan said there had already been significant reductions, and "I believe we will have more as soon as we get a second operator on the air."

Mr Brennan asked if the evaluation criteria for the award of the second licence would be made available to consortia whose bids were not successful.

Mr Lowry said he could not help feeling that the continued questioning of the result of the competition process was casting aspersions on the integrity of the project team which carried out the evaluation on the winning consortium. It was led by the Department and included the independent consultants, Anderson Management International. It reached a single, unanimous result which the Government approved.