O'Brien evidence:Businessman Denis O'Brien said a report from the tribunal that vindicated him would not undo the damage that has been done to his reputation.
Mr O'Brien told his counsel, Eoin McGonigal SC, the tribunal's decision to inquire into his affairs had been launched with a great splash but it had been years before he had had an opportunity to respond.
He said the most hurtful aspect of the whole matter had been when his daughter was born and the tribunal had sought his wife's medical records.
Mr O'Brien accused the tribunal of suppressing information that was supportive of his position and of not pursuing potential witnesses who would have been supportive of his position.
He said the tribunal had gone "on and on and on" and had been used against him by his competitors in Ireland and elsewhere.
The tribunal's inquiries had gone on for eight years and people had forgotten that his company Esat Digifone won the State's second mobile phone licence fairly and on the basis of its submission. The suggestion that he had given financial benefits in relation to the licence to former minister Michael Lowry was "totally untrue".
He criticised the tribunal for not disclosing at an early stage that it had commissioned a report from economist Peter Bacon on the licence competition. He said Mr Bacon, as far as he was aware, had never been involved in a mobile phone licence competition. Michael Andersen, the Danish consultant who had designed the competition, had been involved in 120 licence competitions around the world.
It was his "firm view" that the tribunal had engineered matters so as to ensure that Mr Andersen would never come to give evidence. He said civil servants had been questioned about a possible acceleration of the licence competition process when a document had existed that showed it had run according to schedule. How anyone could "hide or prevent" this document getting to people who were being questioned as witnesses was "beyond belief".
Mr O'Brien said other material not introduced in evidence - transcripts of an interview conducted in private by the tribunal with Mr Austin's widow, Margaret Austin - supported his evidence that he had purchased a house in Spain in 1996 from the late David Austin.
Mr O'Brien completed his evidence and the tribunal adjourned.
