Moriarty Tribunal focuses on award of Esat licence

THE Moriarty Tribunal will today embark on the most complex phase of the five-year-old inquiry when it examines the background to the awarding of the State's second mobile phone licence to Denis O'Brien's Esat Digifone group.

Its focus will be an examination of whether there was anything irregular about the manner in which the licence was won by an international consortium backed by Mr O'Brien and the Norwegian telecommunications group, Telenor.

The issue has raised concerns that the State could be liable for a multi-million euro compensation claim if any evidence of impropriety is found.

Several of the consortia who were unsuccessful bidders for the licence, which was awarded by the then Minister for Telecommunications, Michael Lowry in October 1995, have already signalled their intention to sue the Government if any adverse findings are made.

Mr O'Brien's Esat group was the surprise winner of the lucrative mobile phone licence after it had beaten off strong competition from several other consortia which included leading telecommunications firms such as Motorola and Persona.

The Tribunal has already heard evidence about a number of large financial transactions involving Mr O'Brien which ultimately were linked to payments to Mr Lowry.

However, Mr O'Brien has denied all knowledge of making any payments which personally benefited the former Fine Gael minister.

Although the licence was awarded for just £15m, Mr O'Brien made a personal fortune of £230m when Esat was subsequently sold to British Telecom a few years later.

Senior civil servants including the former secretary of the Department of Transport, Energy and Communications, John Loughrey, are expected to tell the Tribunal that Mr Lowry could not have influenced the decision to award the licence to Esat Digifone.

A project group headed by a senior civil servant, Martin Brennan and involving a team of Danish consultants, deemed the Esat bid to have scored the highest of all six applicants. The current module of the Tribunal will also question the level of awareness among the project team of the role of the controversial businessman, Dermot Desmond, in the Esat bid. The high-profile financier pocketed more than 100m from the eventual sale of Esat through his shareholding in the company via his own investment firm, IIU.