Mr Ray Burke has denied the decision to introduce independent national radio came "out of a clear blue sky", as stated by a senior civil servant who worked with him on local radio legislation.
Last October, Mr Michael Grant, former assistant secretary at the Department of Communications, told the Flood tribunal his Department had no policy on national independent radio and had not been asked for advice on it.
Yesterday, Mr Burke said the decision on a national radio station was not made out of the blue and had been "kicked around" by the Department for some time. He said the ultimate decision was made by the government, and not by him.
Asked why the proposal appeared to have been made without research from his civil servants, Mr Burke said: "Because it was an idea that I had and that's what ministers are supposed to do." "The only source of news and current affairs in particular and entertainment generally at a national level was coming from just RTE. They'd been doing an excellent job - don't get me wrong. But was it time to move into the other area of an alternative source of news and current affairs and entertainment, etc, from an Irish base?"
Mr Patrick Hanratty SC, for the tribunal, said no one in the Department had identified a demand for a station and no one had done research on the proposal. "Civil servants advise. Ministers decide. That's the situation . . . All of the original thinking doesn't come from the Civil Service. If it did, you wouldn't need the democratic situation," Mr Burke said.
"We're up to our eyes in review boards and everything else in this country. What you needed were people making decisions."
Mr Hanratty pointed to a government memo, a summary of the memo and the draft legislation for local radio licences, drawn up in July 1987. Neither the memo nor the summary referred to a national radio licence, Mr Hanratty said. The first mention was in an appended note on the draft legislation.
He said no record existed of consultation with the government before a formal memo was submitted by Mr Burke on November 16th, 1987.
However, Mr Burke said he had raised the issue with the government informally on October 28th. There was no record of this, Mr Hanratty said, and suggested the meeting on November 16th was just "window dressing" and a "charade". Mr Burke denied this - it was how matters were dealt with in government. Issues would be discussed informally and then presented formally.
Earlier yesterday, the tribunal heard that Mr Burke's bank manager had recorded his political fund of £118,000 as a personal asset, after he had retired from politics. He could not explain why this was done but said his bank manager did "a good line in fiction".