Esat ‘pushed the law to its limits’

TWO senior civil servants had reservations about Esat Telecom’s approach to regulations governing the telecom sector, the Moriarty Tribunal heard yesterday.

Esat pushed the law to its limits and put it up to the system to stop them, Seán MacMahon and Ed O’Callaghan reported. They questioned whether such a company should be given the licence to run the country’s second mobile phone network.

The two members represented the technical and regulatory division in the Department of Communications on the project team vetting consortia seeking the licence in 1995. However, the two officials conceded the majority feeling of the GSM project team was Esat had won and there was no basis for overriding the result.

The official note recorded the project team was unanimous in the choice of the Esat Digifone consortium, headed by Denis O’Brien and backed by Norwegian telecoms firm Telenor.

Tribunal lawyer Jerry Healy SC questioned why former minister Michael Lowry had apparently accelerated the announcement date.

The tribunal has heard Mr Lowry spoke with the party leaders of the Fine Gael-led coalition government on October 25, 1995, and they agreed Esat Digifone should be given the right to negotiate for the licence.

Later that day, a press conference was called where Mr Lowry announced the result. The Cabinet gave its formal approval at its meeting the following day. Danish consultant Michael Andersen expressed his concern to witness about potential political difficulty if the result wasn’t announced quickly.

The principal officer at the Department of Communications, Martin Brennan, said he conveyed that view somewhere along the way, probably to department secretary general John Loughrey and Mr Lowry as well.

“I seem to remember Mr Loughrey welcoming the idea that we could get the result out within the deadline originally foreseen before the intervention of the European Commission. The originally envisaged announcement date, late November 1995, was no more than an informed estimate.”

Mr Brennan said Mr Andersen told him that once the result was known it was better to make it public. Otherwise there was room for speculation and political intrigue.

He said there had been no leaking of information from the department.