O’Brien ‘evasive’ during mobile phone licence talks

BUSINESSMAN Denis O’Brien was evasive and ambivalent during negotiations that secured his consortium the licence to run the State’s second mobile telephone network, the Moriarty Tribunal heard yesterday.

“DOB is as evasive as ever,” wrote Seán MacMahon, of the telecommunications regulatory division in the Department of Communications and a member of the evaluation team that selected Digifone from six bidders. He also said Mr O’Brien was ambivalent on the role of the banks connected with the consortium.

Mr MacMahon’s profile of the Esat Digifone chairman was contained in handwritten notes made a few weeks before the licence was awarded in mid-May 1996. “I knew Denis O’Brien from coming in and out on this issue and I found it was difficult to get a straight answer from him. In his favour, let it be said, Denis O’Brien was a man who surrounded himself with well-chosen experts and it seemed to me that he chose, quite deliberately, not to know too much about the nuts and bolts of his operation,” said Mr MacMahon.