Tribunal pays over €500k to consultant

The Moriarty Tribunal has made one of its highest payments yet of €536,876.94 to cover the costs of Danish telecoms expert, Michael Andersen, the Irish Examiner has learnt.

The sums were paid out over the past two weeks to Mr Andersen and his legal representatives, according to sources.

Mr Andersen was paid €95,526.49; his solicitors, Maples and Calders, received €261,990 in fees; Danish law firm, Bech Bruun, received €48,750; Mr Andersen’s senior council John Gleeson got €74,415; lawyer John Breslin received €50,430; and, an amount of €5,765.49 was paid for office outlay.

Mr Andersen caused considerable controversy when he appeared before the Moriarty Tribunal in 2010.

He was first hired by the then government during 1995 and 1996 to act as a lead consultant in the process of awarding the second mobile phone licence.

The licence was awarded to a company controlled by businessman, Denis O’Brien, Esat Digifone following a competitive tender process involving six firms.

However, subsequent allegations of an improper relationship between Mr O’Brien and the then minister for communications, Michael Lowry were investigated by the tribunal, which was set up to look at various payments made to politicians.

Mr Andersen initially refused to appear before the tribunal. However, he agreed to appear as a witness in 2010 when Mr O’Brien offered to indemnify his legal costs.

In his statement to Moriarty, Mr Andersen was critical of the tribunal on a number of issues.

He claimed that he had no contact with Mr Lowry during the competition process, nor had there been any interference with the civil servants working on the licence. Moreover, Mr Andersen said it was untrue the claims made by tribunal lawyers that another consortium in the bidding process, Persona, had been judged the winner according to “the results of the quantitative evaluation”. Mr Andersen said tribunal counsel had been using the wrong quantitative scoring chart.

The tribunal subsequently redacted many of these criticisms. However, Mr O’Brien published the full version of Mr Andersen’s statement on a website he had set up, moriartytribunal.com.

The tribunal eventually concluded that Mr Lowry brought undue influence on the competition process, which helped deliver the licence to Mr O’Brien. Mr O’Brien has consistently challenged these findings.

A number of witnesses in the tribunal have put in applications for costs. The biggest pay out so far has been €635,912.41 to Fine Gael. Mr Andersen is the second highest, and Fianna Fáil is third with a payment of €495,127.01.