MORIARTY TRIBUNAL: A civil servant who formed part of the team that selected the winner of the State's second mobile phone licence has said he did not come across any deliberate manipulation of the team's work.
Mr Ed O'Callaghan told Mr Richard Nesbitt SC, for the Department of Communications, that he was never prevented from raising any questions he had about the team's work. He said he never believed anyone was trying to affect a result in a way that he did not agree with. "I didn't pick up any vibe like that," he said. "I never saw any evidence that anything was being massaged here."
When the tribunal resumed yesterday after a week-long break Mr O'Callaghan returned to the witness box.
He was recalled because the tribunal decided it wanted to ask him questions about notes he made in a copy of a early draft of the final report of the team which selected Esat Digifone as the licence competition winner.
Mr O'Callaghan said that he had been working from memory when giving his earlier evidence and had believed his major problem was with the language of the draft report.
However, now that he had refreshed his memory by reading his notes on the draft report, it was obvious that his problems with the report had to do with matters of substance rather than matters of language.
He said he got a copy of the draft report on Friday, October 20th, 1995, and read through it that day and made notes of points he might want to raise at a meeting due to be held on Monday, October 23rd. However he could not recall which if any of the points he had managed to raise during that meeting.
When he left the meeting of the 23rd it had not yet ended and he was of the impression that the team had been granted a further week to complete its work. The following day, the 24th, he learned that the minister, Mr Lowry, was intending to announce the competition result on the 25th.
Mr John Coughlan SC, for the tribunal, said it appeared to be "at least unusual" that what the evaluation process envisaged had not been carried through. He said there was no quantitative evaluation in the report or in an appendix to the report. The evaluation model had envisaged both a quantitative and a qualitative evaluation of the bids submitted.
Mr O'Callaghan said he found it surprising that there was no quantitative evaluation in the final report. He said he never saw a copy of the final report until shown one by the tribunal.
He said he had no memory of being told that the process of conducting a quantitative evaluation had "withered away". "The evaluation model was not followed, isn't that the case," Mr Coughlan said. "I don't know, at this remove," Mr O'Callaghan replied.
Mr Coughlan asked Mr O'Callaghan if he had brought it to anyone's attention "that what was being stated in this report was a distortion of what had happened".
Mr O'Callaghan said that having made his notations he would have discussed them with his superior, Mr Sean McMahon.
Mr O'Callaghan said that when reading the report he was probing what was stated, raising questions and seeking answers. "I was acting as devil's advocate."
He said he was not carrying out a parallel analysis of the bids.
"The analysis had been carried out." He said he was sure that some of the points he had raised had subsequently been cleared up, though the fact that he had never seen the final report was a difficulty. Neither he nor Mr McMahon were given copies of the final report.
Mr Eoghan Fitzsimons SC, for the Norwegian firm, Telenor, which formed part of the Digifone consortium, asked Mr O'Callaghan if he'd felt he was working under "political pressure" at the time. Mr O'Callaghan said he had never felt he had been influenced in his work by political pressure. He said that time pressure was a completely different thing to political pressure.
Mr Fitzsimons said the lengthy and detailed examination that the tribunal was conducting into the evaluation of the bids, was only relevant if there was deliberate manipulation of the evaluation work. He asked if Mr O'Callaghan had come across any such manipulation. "No, I never did," Mr O'Callaghan replied.
The tribunal resumes today.
