Civil servant quizzed over letter

SENIOR civil servant Fintan Towey viewed a letter showing Dermot Desmond’s early involvement in Esat Digifone as the consortium’s attempt to boost its prospects of winning the State’s second mobile phone licence competition.

Yesterday at the Moriarty Tribunal, Mr Towey vigorously defended the decision to effectively ignore the contents of the letter and to send it back, without even keeping a filed copy in the Department of Communications.

He did so, he argued, on the basis it had breached clearly stated GSM competition protocol and therefore should not be considered by members of the project team then evaluating all six applications for the licence.