Rabbitte: Ministers of the day had no role in choosing winning licence

PAT RABBITTE has defended the cabinet that signed off on the state’s second mobile phone licence, saying ministers could not have second guessed the project team’s decision on the winning bid.

Distancing himself and ministerial colleagues from the decision to give the licence to Esat Digifone in 1995, the current Communications Minister said the then cabinet was not involved in choosing the winner.

The minister stressed that once the civil servant project team chose to award the licence to Denis O’Brien’s group, the decision was final.

“The whole purpose of the competition was that it was to do the job, not the Cabinet. It is true that the protocol was subsequently established by the project team,” Minister Rabbitte said.

“The proposition that the cabinet would have somehow second guessed this would be to undermine the basis of the system that was agreed.”

Despite opposition criticisms that the then cabinet — six of whom are in the current Government — hastily approved the deal, Mr Rabbitte told the Dáil that ministers would have had no role in choosing the winning bid.

“To suggest that any other minister or to suggest that the cabinet ought to have second guessed; You get a report on who was the successful bidder and you say: ‘No, I’m not having that, I’m going to award it to number two or number three or number four.’ That simply would not have been acceptable.

“The protocol did not apply to the cabinet, the cabinet was not involved. Once it made the decision, the cabinet was not involved, it was a matter for the project team to get on with the business,” he told the Dáil.

During the debate on the Moriarty Tribunal and its probe into the licence award, Minister Rabbitte also accused Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin of still using “Punch and Judy” politics in attacking the Government.

Mr Martin said yesterday that it was “extraordinary” that Taoiseach Enda Kenny would not formally accept the findings of the tribunal report.

Answering questions, Mr Kenny said that Mr O’Brien had made 14 donations to Fine Gael between July 1994 and May 1996.

However, Independent TD Joe Higgins suggested that it had been “inappropriate and unethical” that Fine Gael took a donation for Ir£4,000 from Mr O’Brien in September 1995, just weeks before the licence was granted to the businessman.