ANALYSIS:Economist Peter Bacon has criticised the 1995 mobile phone licence competition
THE CLOSING act of the Moriarty (Payments to Politicians) Tribunal is proving to be a drawn out affair.
Yesterday's sitting was held in order to allow counsel for businessman Denis O'Brien question economist Dr Peter Bacon about assistance he gave to the tribunal when it was conducting inquiries into the 1995 mobile phone licence competition.
A year ago it was thought the tribunal report would be out by Christmas. However, legal submissions slowed the process in the second half of 2007 as the parties sought to have their say about principles to be applied in the writing of the report.
Recently the complications have been about a different matter. Mr O'Brien has expressed concerns about the brief that was given to Dr Bacon by the tribunal back in 2003 when he was engaged to provide background assistance. Also, he has expressed concern that the witnesses who gave evidence about the licence competition in 2003 were unaware of the assistance Dr Bacon was giving to the tribunal's legal team in assisting their understanding of the competition process.
Mr O'Brien has said that the tribunal's inquiry into the licence process may be fatally flawed. In the context the word fatal presumably means rendered null and void, because of unfairness.
He has already been to the High Court and the Supreme Court challenging the fairness of the tribunal's work, and has failed. During yesterday's hearing the chairman, Mr Justice Michael Moriarty, was insistent that Mr O'Brien's counsel, Eoin McGonigal SC, should not try to re-run matters that had already been determined by the courts.
There were two key points that emerged from the hearing. Dr Bacon said he was not "steered" by the tribunal towards coming to any particular conclusion. He said he had a reputation for independence and had been around long enough to know when someone was trying to steer his work.
Mr McGonigal pointed out that Dr Bacon was supplied with selected material, and given a list of points of concern, when engaged by the tribunal; as against being given all material and no pointers from the tribunal. Dr Bacon seemed unswayed.
The second point relates to the the work the economist did for the tribunal. He was asked to assess certain technical aspects of the process used by the evaluation team, he said. Moreover, he was clear and harsh about his findings.
The original intention was that the bids for the licence would contain considerable numerical information that could be subjected to a quantitative analysis and scored. These values would then be given weightings.
As a secondary element of the evaluation, the outcomes of the quantitative scoring would be subjected to a qualitative analysis.
In the event the quantitative aspect of the process was abandoned and the final outcome was determined using the qualitative assessments. This involved ratings: A,B,C,D, being converted into scores, 1,2,3,4, so the results could be subjected to quantitative calculations.
Dr Bacon was clear in his view: "You don't have to be an expert in anything to fail to see how you can't add a and b and c and d together and get an average."
The conversion of letters into numbers led to an "imprecise quantitative score". In relation to a key table drafted near the end of the evaluation team's work, Dr Bacon said: "In fact, the conclusions, were, you know, inherently inaccurate."
None of this, should the tribunal agree with it, means that the licence process was corrupted but it looks bad for the State.
