Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour)

I will be as fast as I can.

I wish to put on record of the House the extent of my involvement in dealing with the Tribunal of Inquiry into Payments to Politicians and Related Matters carried out by Mr. Justice Moriarty. Chapter 48 of the report is the section which is of most personal interest to me. It retraces, in an exact and comprehensive manner, the events leading up and including Wednesday, 25 October 1995. I wish to say in the first instance that I am completely satisfied that the events, as recounted in the tribunal report, are entirely consistent with my own recollection and with my evidence to the tribunal of inquiry.

The practice of the then rainbow Government was that all Cabinet meetings would be executive decision-making meetings. My diary from the time accurately records that on Wednesday, 25 October 1995, the meeting of party leaders, the Minister for Finance and the Minister for Transport, Energy and Communications was due to take place at 4 p.m. that afternoon. This was known as the Aer Lingus committee or otherwise, as noted in my diary, party leaders re budget finance matters.

The tribunal report states that in advance of this Aer Lingus meeting, the then Taoiseach, John Bruton, had met the then Minister, Deputy Lowry, to discuss what would turn out to be the recommendation made by the Department of Transport, Energy and Communications on the mobile telephone licence. Deputy Lowry has also stated in evidence to the tribunal that I had spoken to him, in advance of the meeting with the party leaders, about the recommendation he would be making to Cabinet. Deputy Lowry has also suggested in his evidence that I had intimated to him my satisfaction with how the mobile telephone competition had been carried out and with the final result. It has been claimed that my satisfaction with the process was based on a briefing I had received from my officials earlier on Wednesday, 25 October. I do not agree at all with this evidence by Deputy Lowry and I stated as much when giving evidence before the tribunal. My diary of Wednesday, 25 October 1995 involved a series of meetings ahead of the party leaders' meeting, all of which took place outside my Department.

I simply did not have the time to read and review the memorandum prepared by an official in my Department regarding the mobile phone licence competition. I had no knowledge of the outcome of the competition before attending the party leaders' Aer Lingus meeting at 4 p.m. The meeting of Wednesday, 25 October took

place at 4 p.m as scheduled. At that meeting after we had concluded the scheduled business of the meeting, which concerned the Cahill report and restructuring Aer Lingus, Deputy Lowry informed John Bruton, Dick Spring, Proinsias de Rossa and myself that the mobile phone licence competition had been completed, that Esat Digifone was the clear winner of the competition and that it had won by a clear margin over the other consortia.

It is my recollection, as noted in chapter 48, paragraph 60 of the tribunal report that Deputy Lowry presented a league table score which covered each of the applicants in the competition. Given the scale of difference between the numerical scores provided, I was satisfied that the outcome of the process had selected a clear winner. It is worth quoting the following section of chapter 48, paragraph 60, for the benefit of the House. It states:

What those present did not know, and were not told, was that those numerical scores represented the outcome of a subjective judgemental exercise; that, in arriving at those scores, weightings other than those agreed in advance of the process had been applied; and that the representation of the results in that manner was one which the independent consultants had not recommended, and had regarded as a presentation which could distort the concept of a qualitative evaluation.

I had no prior knowledge or reason to suspect the competition may have been conducted in any fashion other than the correct one.

I also wish to read into the record of the House two separate remarks made by Mr. Justice Moriarty when evaluating the evidence made by all who attended this meeting. Again, I wish to quote from chapter 48, paragraph 64, which refers to the briefing document provided by Deputy Lowry to the party leaders and me:

Having regard to the manner in which the result was portrayed in that document, it is perhaps not surprising that Mr. Bruton, Mr. Spring, Mr. De Rossa and Mr. Quinn were left with the impression that there was a clear, unconditional and unequivocal outcome.

I also want to quote directly from chapter 48, paragraph 59. It states:

None of the party leaders nor Mr. Quinn knew anything of the events which had occurred over the previous days and weeks within the Project Group and the Department. Nor were they aware of the views of certain members of the Project Group, nor of the concerns surrounding the finances of Esat Digifone, nor of the significant departures which had been made from the evaluation methodology adopted prior to the closing date of the competitive process, and the possible consequences of those departures, nor it seems were they aware of how close the result had been. Had they been so aware, it seems from their evidence that they would have wished to explore matters beyond the level of consideration given by them on the afternoon of Wednesday 25th October 1995. Had the result been presented as a close one, Mr. De Rossa testified that he would certainly have sought more information, and Mr. Spring thought that had there been a ambiguity or draw in the outcome, the matter would probably have been referred back to the full Cabinet. In the event, none of that information was provided by Mr. Lowry. Instead it was the impression of the party leaders and Mr. Quinn, from what was conveyed to them by Mr. Lowry, that the result had been clear, unequivocal, and unqualified, and they had been led to believe, as Mr. De Rossa put it, that Esat Digifone was so far ahead that they could not give the outcome to any other consortium.

It was on the basis of this information, which can only be described as misleading and factually inaccurate, although it did not appear so at the time, that the three party leaders of the rainbow Government and myself, as Minister for Finance, were misled by Deputy Lowry into giving what amounted to a de factoGovernment approval.

We were told there was pressure for the information to be released because it would leak to the wider public and since there was a clear-cut conclusion which would be ratified by the Government at its next full meeting we might as well make the knowledge public. We collectively decided to so do. I will conclude my remarks with one final quote from the report of Mr. Justice Moriarty from chapter 48, paragraph 66: "in consequence of the approach taken by Mr. Lowry, the opportunity for

scrutiny or consideration by his Cabinet colleagues, or their advisors, was significantly curtailed".

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