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.