An official with the European Commission said he has no memory of giving a copy of the first page of a letter concerning the State's second mobile phone licence competition to a solicitor acting for Esat Telecom.
The solicitor, Mr Jarlath Burke, has told the tribunal in a statement of intended evidence, that it was "most likely" that the letter came from the official, Mr Christian Hocepied.
Mr Hocepied said in evidence yesterday that he had no memory of doing so but that he did not exclude it as a possibility. Esat Telecom was part of the Esat Digifone consortium that won the competition.
At the outset of the hearing, counsel for the tribunal, Mr Jerry Healy SC, said the tribunal would seek to establish if the former minister Mr Michael Lowry had anything to do with the letter getting to Mr Burke.
He said the tribunal was also interested in whether possession of the letter gave an "edge" to Esat Digifone in the licence competition then under way. He said that if Mr Lowry was not involved but if the letter did give an advantage, then this should be clarified "in fairness to Mr Lowry".
The letter was sent by the EU Competition Commissioner, Mr Karl Van Miert, to Mr Lowry on July 14th, 1995. Mr Burke, in his statement of intended evidence, said he believed there was no impropriety involved in his being given a copy of the letter.
Mr Hocepied told Mr John Coughlan SC, for the tribunal, that he had no memory of the events about which he was being asked to give evidence. A lot of his evidence was based on what was in the Commission's files.
He said that he had been in contact with Mr Burke in relation to matters to do with Esat Telecom's land-line business during 1995 as well as in relation to the Irish mobile-phone licence competition.
He agreed with Mr Coughlan that from markings on the various forms of the July letter, it was evident that the page that ended up in Mr Burke's files was a copy of a draft he had faxed to Mr Martin Brennan and Mr Fintan Towey in the Dept of Transport, Energy and Communications.
The tribunal heard that Mr Brennan and Mr Towey were adamant they did not give the letter to Mr Burke.
The fax bannerhead on the top of the letter sent to the Department showed the date it was sent and the time, which was 15.57. However the copy that was found in Mr Burke's files had no fax bannerhead.
Mr Hocepied agreed and said the European Commission flag on the letterhead was cut in half and the top of the page missing. He said that if he had sent the letter to Mr Burke he believed he would have sent all the letter by fax and with a cover sheet.
The page contained the details of the outcome of negotiations between the Department and the Commission concerning the fee that would be paid for the new licence. The first page of the letter revealed that the Irish government would be giving a weight of "less than 15 per cent" to the fee issue, when deciding on the winner of the licence competition.
Mr Hocepied said any mathematician looking at a list of eight criteria would have been able to work out that the fourth listed criteria would have to have a weighting within a particular range. The value of the letter to a bidder was "nil", he said.
The tribunal resumes on Tuesday.
