The former minister Mr Michael Lowry will tell the tribunal that he never suggested to Mr Denis O'Brien that he, Mr O'Brien, get Mr Dermot Desmond involved in the Esat Digifone consortium, the tribunal was told, Colm Keena reports.
Mr Rossa Fanning, for Mr Lowry, told the tribunal of Mr Lowry's intended evidence while questioning Mr Leslie Buckley, a former director of Esat Digifone.
Mr Buckley told Mr Fanning that he had no reason to believe that Mr Lowry had ever suggested to Mr O'Brien that Mr Desmond get involved.
Mr Jerry Healy SC, for the tribunal, asked Mr Buckley about a statement of intended evidence from Mr Per Simmonsen, of Telenor, a former member of the Esat Consortium.
Mr Simmonsen is to tell the tribunal that some time in late September 1995, Mr O'Brien told him he had met Mr Lowry in a pub and that Mr Lowry had suggested that he, Mr O'Brien, get Mr Desmond involved.
Mr Buckley said Mr O'Brien had never told him about any such suggestion. Mr O'Brien has already rejected Mr Simmonsen's statement.
Mr Buckley said he happened to meet Mr O'Brien in an office foyer on September 18th, 1995. Both men were going to the offices of William Fry solicitors and Mr O'Brien suggested they travel together in his car.
On the way he told Mr Buckley that he had met Mr Lowry the previous day, after the All Ireland Final, and that the two men had discussed the Esat Telecom fixed line business. They had met in a pub.
Mr O'Brien had also told him that he had met with Mr Desmond and that Mr Desmond was interested in becoming involved in the Esat Digifone consortium.
In September 1995 Mr Buckley was a director of Esat Telecom and its chief operating officer.
He became a director of Esat Digifone in May 1996. He is now a shareholder in and a non-executive director of Digicell, the mobile phone company Mr O'Brien has set up in the Caribbean.
Mr Buckley said that when he arrived at William Fry solicitors on September 18th, 1995, Mr O'Brien asked him to attend the meeting he was going to with managing partner Mr Owen O'Connell.
A memo by Mr O'Connell of the meeting reads in part: "Dermot Desmond going ahead with transaction. Need underwriting letter for department because finances are seen as the weakness. Dermot Desmond wants 30 per cent of GSM".
Mr Buckley told Mr Healy that to tie the content of the memo with Mr O'Brien's meeting with Mr Lowry on the previous day would be "absolute speculation". He said that if Mr O'Brien and Mr Lowry had discussed the mobile phone licence competition then under way, he would have told Mr Buckley in the car.
He also said Mr O'Brien would have told Mr O'Connell, and it would be recorded in the memo.
Mr Buckley told Mr Fanning that he had met Mr Lowry on a number of occasions during the period concerned.
Asked if he was in a position to give any evidence of any wrongdoing or impropriety by Mr Lowry, Mr Buckley said: "None absolutely."
At the end of Mr Buckley's evidence at 3.30 p.m., he said he felt he had been treated very unfairly by the tribunal.
He said that when, last week, it became apparent that he needed to be in the Caribbean for business reasons today, his solicitor contacted the tribunal.
He said it was agreed that his evidence would be heard between 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. A subsequent contact between his solicitor and the tribunal led to his becoming aware that the tribunal was not going to sit until 11 a.m.
If his solicitor had not contacted the tribunal, he would not have been told, he said. He had missed a flight to the Caribbean and a meeting there today.
Mr Justice Moriarty said it was his practice to facilitate people. However, he had the powers of the High Court to compel attendance and had a duty to finalise the inquiry.