The Taoiseach's special adviser is a director of the public affairs company which advised the telecommunications group NTL on its successful bid to buy Cablelink from two State companies last month.
Records in the Companies Office, seen by The Irish Times, show that Mr Paddy Duffy, a member of the political staff in the Taoiseach's office, joined the board of Dillon Consultants last December. The tendering process for Cablelink, which was jointly owned by Telecom Eireann and RTE, was just about to get underway at that time. Cablelink was sold to NTL on May 6th for £535 million. However, Mr Duffy says he played no role in advising NTL on its bid. He told The Irish Times on Wednesday that he had been appointed to the board of Dillon Consultants without his knowledge. He said he had told the Taoiseach last November that he would leave his present post at the end of 1999 to work in the private sector.
"Paul Dillon [the company's managing director] did this as a gesture to me before Christmas," Mr Duffy said on Wednesday. "He had intended it as a surprise for me." Mr Duffy said that when he found out he asked Mr Dillon to remove his name from the list of directors, and Mr Dillon had done this.
However, a further inspection of Companies Office records yesterday showed that Mr Duffy's name had not been removed and that he was still listed as a director. The official document recording that Mr Duffy was made a director, a B 10 form, was lodged with the Companies Office last March 12th and says he became a director on December 9th, 1998. A signature purporting to be that of Mr Duffy appears on the form. By law, individuals must consent before being appointed as company directors.
Mr Duffy denied having had any role in Dillon Consultants. The Irish Times has learned, however, that he attended discussions in London in February between Dillon Consultants and an international public affairs consultancy, APCO, with which Dillon has since formed a strategic alliance. APCO and Dillon Consultants had a client in common - NTL - and the deal was finalised on May 10th.
Those talks were attended by Mr Dillon, Mr Duffy - still on the Taoiseach's staff - the chairman of APCO Europe, Mr Bradley Staples, and the head of APCO in the US, Ms Margery Kraus. Mr Duffy has confirmed he attended the talks but said it was to discuss his own future rather than as a representative of Dillon Consultants. He said he has had discussions with four or five major firms about what he would do when he finished working for the Taoiseach at the end of 1999. He would not make any decisions until after the summer, he said.
Mr Duffy said the suggestion that he was involved in Dillon Consultants had been raised with the Minister for Public Enterprise, Ms O'Rourke, recently. When this happened, "I told Mary O'Rourke I had no association with them whatsoever. I said I did know Paul Dillon, but I had no involvement professionally or otherwise with them."
The former Fine Gael leader, Mr Alan Dukes, has confirmed that he met the Minister in her office on April 28th at his request, when he became aware of the allegation that Mr Duffy was a director of the consultancy firm dealing with the NTL bid for Cablelink.
He said Ms O'Rourke had told him she was "astonished" at the suggestion. "She said she was unhappy about the tendering process and had been back to the Attorney General for the second time about the propriety of the procedure they were using," Mr Dukes stated.
"Ms O'Rourke rang me the following day in Bonn, April 29th, to tell me she had spoken to the Taoiseach and had been assured by him that Mr Duffy had no connection whatsoever with Dillon Consultants," according to Mr Dukes.