The Moriarty tribunal report published today says the financial assessment used in the awarding of the State's second mobile licence was found to be "fraught with error and irregularity".
It also says the project group overseeing the awarding of the licence in 1995 overseeing the bid process was weakened to the point where it was no longer the decision-maker.
The model adopted by the project group stipulated an evaluation focusing on both quantitative and qualitative issues.
The rationale of adopting the dual approach was to offset the risk of an arbitrary result emerging and to ensure the technique used in selecting the best application was valid and reliable.
The quantitative part was expected to generate a limited range of precise objective numerical results in accordance with predetermined formulae. The qualitative part of the process would, through discussion of sub-groups of the project group, generate a wider rage of subjective and relatively imprecise results.
However, during the process, the results of the quantitative evaluation, which ranked Esat Digifone in third place, were not published in the final report, leaving the qualitative evaluation as the sole determinant in deciding a winner.
The Moriarty tribunal report states the decision to rely purely on the results of the qualitative evaluation "was in the absence of the counterbalance of hard data, one which was so close as to be inherently questionable".
The tribunal also notes what it said was an irregular application of numerical weightings during the process that distorted the outcome of the process in favour of Esat Digifone.
Other problems cited with the evaluation model used included the financial assessment, which was meant to ascertain whether an applicant had the money to properly fund and run the second GSM network.
