Hearings into O'Brien's Doncaster stadium deal have been blocked, writes Colm Keena

Denis O'Brien claims he is more damaged by the Moriarty tribunal than the two politicians who are its supposed focus, Charles Haughey and Michael Lowry.

The very bad relationship that has developed between O'Brien and the tribunal since 2001, when the tribunal began investigating possible financial links between him and Lowry, was very evident from O'Brien's affidavit as read to the court yesterday on the opening day of the High Court clash between O'Brien and the tribunal.

The "money trail" issues investigated by the tribunal in 2001 involve property deals in the UK in which an English solicitor, Christopher Vaughan, acted for Lowry. Having looked at these matters, the tribunal began its mammoth inquiry into the awarding of the State's mobile phone licence to O'Brien's Esat Digifone, an inquiry that has yet to be completed.

Lowry was minister for communications at the time that the licence was awarded.

What O'Brien is now seeking is an order preventing the tribunal from proceeding to hold public inquiries into another property deal, the purchase for £4 million of the Doncaster Rovers football stadium, in 1998.

At the heart of the matter is a letter from Vaughan to Lowry, written in September 1998 and in which Vaughan refers to Lowry's "involvement" in the Doncaster deal.

The existence of this letter was revealed by The Irish Times in January 2003 and the tribunal's decision to hold hearings into the matter was announced in September 2004.

The hearings have been blocked ever since as the matter has travelled to the High Court, the Supreme Court, and now back to the High Court again.

Vaughan has told the tribunal, in private, that he wrote the letter while under a mistaken impression that Lowry was involved, but now believes that this is not the case. He says the letter was never sent.

Lowry says he has no connection with the Doncaster deal. O'Brien says the Doncaster property is 100 per cent owned by his Isle of Man based family trust.

Vaughan will not come to Dublin to give evidence before the tribunal.

Nor will a Northern Ireland based businessman, Kevin Phelan, who may have been present when Vaughan formed the impression that led to his writing the letter.

Phelan may have also informed Vaughan some days later that he was wrong in his impression.

O'Brien is arguing that without Vaughan, there is no justification for proceeding with the public inquiry into the matter. "There is no evidence," said his counsel, Eoin McGonigal SC.

"I say that there is an obvious downside in bringing this application because it will no doubt be presented in public as though I am seeking to prevent information coming out about the Doncaster Rovers transaction," O'Brien said in his affidavit. However he said he felt very strongly about his private affairs being investigated by the tribunal and then presented to the public by the tribunal.

"I wish to emphasise that I have absolutely nothing to hide in respect of the Doncaster Rovers transaction".

The Doncaster stadium was bought with the intention of knocking it down and developing the site. The vendors included Ken Richardson, a businessman who was convicted in connection with an earlier attempt to burn the stadium.

There are allegations that Richardson and an associate may have been trying to blackmail O'Brien with the Vaughan letter.

The tribunal's response to O'Brien contains a lot of detail concerning its private inquiries into the matter so a lot of the digging it has done in private seems set to enter the public domain this week, irrespective of what is decided, eventually, by Mr Justice Henry Abbott.