Taxpayers may face huge bill over tribunal findings

TAXPAYERS face having to fork out hundreds of millions of euro in compensation after billionaire Denis O’Brien yesterday claimed a tribunal will rule he was awarded a mobile phone contract “illegally”.

Persona, the rival bidders for the lucrative licence given to Mr O’Brien’s Esat consortium in the 1990s, seem poised to sue the State for massive damages if the Moriarty tribunal finds there was wrong-doing in the process to hand out the contract.

However, Labour insisted that if any parties were found to have acted illegally by the tribunal, it should be them and not the taxpayer who footed any subsequent compensation bills arising from that.

Newspaper tycoon Mr O’Brien launched a coordinated preemptive strike against the tribunal, insisting it had an agenda against him in order to justify its costs.

Mr O’Brien said that preliminary findings by the probe effectively state that the Esat consortium was “illegally” issued with the second mobile phone licence because the tribunal found he had a “corrupt” relationship with then Fine Gael communications minister Michael Lowry.

Mr O’Brien claimed there were 60 “negative findings” against him issued in preliminary rulings circulated by the tribunal last November.

The billionaire said it would be bad for Ireland’s reputation if the tribunaldecided civil servants in the communications department had acted improperly.

Labour’s communications spokesman Tommy Broughan warned that the tribunal should be allowed to complete its work without any interference.

“The tribunal is anattempt to get at the truth and should be allowed to do that,” he said.

“We have invested a lot of money into this process and I want to see its final report come out so that we can assess what has been happening.

“I do not know what its findings will be, but if it does conclude that people have acted illegally then it should be those people and not the taxpayer that has to shoulder the burden of any claims resulting from that wrong-doing.

“If anyone has acted illegally, then of course I would also hope that the DPP and the fraud squad would then get involved.

“A major compensation action from a rival for the mobile phone contract would be the last thing the state needs at the moment, but we do need to get to the bottom of all this,” he said.

The long-running inquiry is examining if there was any undue political interference by Mr Lowry in the awarding of the State’s second mobile phone licence to Mr O’Brien’s Esat consortium in 1996.

It is also investigating whether there was any financial links between the two men. Mr O’Brien and Mr Lowry have strenuously denied that there was anything improper in the manner in which the licence was won by Esat.