The cabinet of the Rainbow Coalition of 1994-1997 was surprised Esat Digifone won the competition for the State's second GSM licence in 1995, the former minister for finance, Mr Ruairí Quinn told the Moriarty tribunal today.
Ruairi Quinn
He said Esat were "seen as outsiders" by the Cabinet as they had "less experience and the financial muscle than say someone like Motorola" who were involved in the bidding for the mobile phone licence.
However, although surprise was expressed at Cabinet level about the outcome of the independent competition, the former Labour leader said there "was no question the Government was going to second guess the process".
Mr Quinn said he had no prior knowledge that during a Cabinet committee meeting on October 25 th, 1995, the-then minister for Transport Enterprise and Communications, Mr Michael Lowry, was going to announce he had the results of the competition.
Mr Lowry sought authorisation from the Cabinet to release the results of the competition to the Cabinet and to make public the results as there was a lot of speculation in the media about the winners and losers and this was damaging to the process, the tribunal was told. The Cabinet agreed to Mr Lowry's request.
Mr Quinn added he had no knowledge of an alleged promise from former Fianna Fáil taoiseach Mr Albert Reynolds to Motorola that the company would win the licence.