The chairman of the Moriarty tribunal has ruled that he will not be calling economist Dr Peter Bacon in relation to the inquiry into the awarding of the State's second mobile phone licence to Esat Digifone.
Dr Bacon was engaged by the tribunal to draft a report in relation to the competition and how aspects of it were conducted.
Parties before the tribunal only learned subsequently that this had occurred and argued that it should have been disclosed before evidence was taken over a substantial period of time from civil servants involved in assessing the applications for the licence.
Mr Justice Moriarty, in a ruling posted on the tribunal's website yesterday, said he was in agreement with a number of submissions received on the matter and had decided not to call Dr Bacon, despite earlier indications that he did intend calling him.
He said Dr Bacon was not being asked by the tribunal to conduct an audit of the licence process or to evaluate the applications so as to express an opinion as to whether the correct result was arrived at.
A number of parties in their submissions queried the value of calling Dr Bacon, as his area of expertise was not in relation to mobile phone competitions.
Parties argued that Dr Bacon's views would not constitute expert evidence, as defined by the courts. Mr Justice Moriarty also said the tribunal had endeavoured to get a number of the Danish consultants who took part in the licence evaluation process to come to give evidence, but without success.
Michael Andersen, the lead consultant who took part in the evaluation, has not come to Dublin to give evidence. Mr Justice Moriarty said efforts had also been made to get Tage Iversen, Jon Bruel, Ole Federsen and Michael Thrane to come to Dublin, but without success.
