The finance director of RTE was "flabbergasted" at "wholly distorted" figures provided by a former director of Century Radio in a letter to the Independent Radio and Television Commission (IRTC), the tribunal heard.
Mr Gerry O'Brien accused a former director of Century Radio, Mr James Stafford, of totally distorting figures presented to the IRTC which were used as the basis of a request to the then minister for communications, Mr Ray Burke, to make RTE reduce its charges to Century.
RTE was never informed or asked to comment on these figures by Century, the Department or the IRTC, said Mr O'Brien.
Mr Stafford's letter, complaining about the RTE figures, was included in the IRTC's request to the Minister to reduce RTE's charges to Century.
The letter also contained a breakdown of finances, with an estimated cost of £375,000 to RTE for carrying Century's signal.
Mr O'Brien said he had never seen these figures until presented with them by the tribunal, and that Mr Stafford had totally misrepresented the facts.
In its application for a ministerial directive, the IRTC also included another letter from the chairman of Century, Mr Laurence Crowley, which set out details of its negotiations with RTE.
Mr O'Brien said that some of these comments were totally untrue.
The IRTC later applied, on Century's behalf, for a ministerial directive to cut the charges.
After the directive was issued, the RTE Authority met the Minister in an effort to increase the amount, but "it did not advance the thing any further. The game was up," he said.
Mr Burke had already called on RTE to reduce its demand, made at a meeting on January 5th, 1989, for almost £1.4 million for carrying the signal of a new national commercial station.
This was two weeks before applicants for the franchise made their oral presentations to the IRTC, and three weeks before Century was announced as the winner of the licence.
The figure was further reduced to £692,000 on January 11th, 1989, when RTE executives met officials in Mr Burke's Department. At this stage Mr O'Brien regarded the figures as "set in stone".
RTE then further reduced the fee to £614,000, and Mr O'Brien assumed the figure was "fixed and finalised". A ministerial directive in March further reduced the licence fee to below £400,000.
When the directive was issued, the difference between RTE's estimate of the cost and what Century paid was about £600,000.
Mr Stafford said in a letter that the "£375,000 offer to RTE for full transmission was fair and reasonable."
This offer, described as "ridiculous" by Mr O'Brien, "never emerged at any stage in the talks with Century."
Mr O'Brien said he was "100 per cent satisfied" that he had never heard anything about the offer, or the basis on which it was calculated. If the figure had been put to RTE, Mr O'Brien said he would definitely have heard about it and they would have recorded it. He would also definitely have known about the possibility of a directive being issued against RTE.
With these figures, "we were on a loser. There was no prospect of delivering the service at this price," he said.
Before the directive was issued, Mr O'Brien said, RTE expected Century to buy its own equipment. After the directive, he found RTE had to acquire the equipment for Century.
Mr O'Brien expressed surprise at this development, saying: "RTE is not in the business of banking."