O’Brien calls for review of Moriarty Tribunal

DENIS O’BRIEN has called on the head of the Moriarty Tribunal and his legal team to step aside and allow an overseas judge carry out an independent review of the inquiry and all the evidence it has heard.

The billionaire businessman claims the inquiry, which has spent nine years investigating the state’s awarding of a mobile phone licence to his company in 1996, is biased and riddled with procedural errors.

In a scathing statement yesterday, Mr O’Brien said: “The integrity and independence of the Moriarty Tribunal has been utterly undermined and compromised by its own actions and glaring shortcomings. The Moriarty Tribunal as presently constituted is simply not capable of producing an impartial final report.

The statement follows an unprecedented public comment by tribunal chairman, Mr Justice Michael Moriarty, last Friday in which he tookissue with what he called a “sustained attack” on the work of the tribunal.

Judge Moriarty did not name the attackers but the inquiry’s main critics have been Mr O’Brien and Michael Lowry, who was communications minister when the phone licence was granted.

Michael Andersen, a telecommunications expert who designed the competition for the mobile phone licence, joined in the criticisms a fortnight ago. He claims he was never called as a witness to the inquiry because his evidence – that the licensing process was properly conducted – did not suit its agenda.

In last week’s statement, Judge Moriarty said he felt it necessary to speak out to defend the tribunal’s integrity. “I wish to make it clear that none of these criticisms will interfere with the impartial discharge of my remit; nor will they deflect me from ensuring that fair procedures are adhered to in bringing my work to conclusion; and nor will they inhibit me from reporting, without fear or favour.

“My report will be based solely on evidence heard at public sittings of the tribunal, and not on unsworn speculation or allegations, from whatever source.”

The latest exchange of views places the tribunal under fresh scrutiny, coming as they do in the wake of last month’s admission by Judge Moriarty that he had made two “not insignificant” errors.

He had wrongly concluded that a barrister who advised the state in 1996 that the licence could be granted to Mr O’Brien, and whose advice was accepted by the Attorney General at the time, had not given advice on the relevant issue. He also failed to circulate a memo of a meeting between the barrister and two officials from the Attorney General’s office in 2002.

Mr O’Brien said he had no faith in the tribunal. “The chairman and his legal team must step aside to allow someone without the obvious baggage, sense of self-interest and sense of self-protection to take this process to a fair conclusion.”