Senior civil servant believed project team would choose winning bid

A SENIOR civil servant told the Moriarty Tribunal yesterday the clear understanding given to him and colleagues who vetted bidders seeking the State’s second mobile phone licence was that they alone would select the winner.

The evaluation of the applicants was conducted by the GSM2 project team, of which he was a member, as a sealed process. Evidence has been heard the project team agreed to abide by a strict protocol not to discuss the matter outside their meeting room.

The tribunal is examining whether former communications minister Michael Lowry interfered with the process.

Mr Seán MacMahon said: "The clear understanding we had was that we as a body were not going to be interfered with we would choose a candidate and we would put it to the minister." Following that, the minister would take it to his cabinet colleagues.

It was his understanding if the minister rejected their recommendation, this could only occur for very good reasons, the former principal officer in the Department of Transport, Energy and Communications stressed.

He and Ed O'Callaghan, another member of the project team, worked in the section dealing with the regulation of the telecoms industry. Mr MacMahon has since transferred to Land Registry.

Mr MacMahon said he and other officers in the telecommunications division were given the authority o carry out the GSM evaluation free from ministerial interference.

He told tribunal lawyer, Jerry Healy SC, he wished that the same approach adopted for the GSM2 project could have applied to the department's telecoms regulatory section.

Although at the time this area was under the minister's direct responsibility, Mr MacMahon said he had tried to keep it as independent as he could.

For the past number of weeks, evidence has been given by six civil servants relating to the award of the GSM2 licence to the Esat Digifone consortium headed by businessman Denis O'Brien. Esat Digifone won the licence competition in October 1995.