Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour)

I have already stated that the tribunal report attributes the genesis of the competition to the former Minister, Mr. Cowen, who was the Minister with responsibility for communications at the time. He brought an aide-memoire to Cabinet and the entire business was discussed as to the merits of an auction system as compared to a "beauty contest" as it was called. Some people have revived the merits of the auction approach. When one examines it one finds that the European Commission had difficulty with a new entrant being treated differently from Eircell. The debate eventually came down in favour of a beauty contest. I refer to a letter from the commission to the Minister which stated: "The commission is not in favour of such an auction procedure for granting mobile licences." The Irish policy priority in the mid-1990s was to catch up with developments in the mobile market where we were lagging significantly behind the rest of Europe. The commission intervened and made very plain that it would not permit a situation where the new entrant was treated less favourably than the existing company. The Department of Finance subsequently during the period of the rainbow coalition Government wanted to raise some moneys and that is where the figure of £25 million came from, £15 million from the new licence and £10 million levied in Eircom in a more complex way. Once the Department satisfied its budgetary figures it was happy and it was considered that the best way to get a new entrant into the market was through the beauty contest. The answer to the Deputy's question is that the parameters were set down by the previous Minister, Brian Cowen and the decision sought from Cabinet by his successor did not really seek to change this in any material way. The decision of the Cabinet was to set up this competition in accordance with best advice at the time. The whole purpose of the competition was that it and not the Cabinet was to do the job. It is true that the protocol was subsequently established by the project team and it recruited AMI Consultants by tender. The proposition that somehow the Cabinet should have second-guessed this would be to undermine the very basis of the system that had been agreed. It is a different issue entirely as to whether the protocol worked or whether the process worked as was envisaged. A report was given to Cabinet as to the identity of the successful bidder and the Cabinet is not going to insist on awarding the contract to the number two or a subsequent bidder. This second-guessing would not have been acceptable.

The protocol did not apply to the Cabinet as the Cabinet was not involved once it made the decision. It was then a matter for the project team to get on with the business. As the Deputy said, it was a rainbow coalition Government, comprising three parties. I would rather put it that where there were difficult decisions or contentious decisions, it was the practice of the three leaders to meet before Cabinet and to hammer out the points at issue. A system of programme managers was in operation at the time which was a very good system. The programme managers tended to meet a few days before the Cabinet meeting-----

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