John Loughrey agreed today with Moriarty Tribunal lawyers that information provided to the Department of Communications on Dermot Desmond's finances appeared to be scant.
A former Secretary of the Department, John Loughrey said he still deemed this information to be sufficient.
Mr Loughrey was being brought through notes of meetings held just days before Esat was awarded the second GSM licence in 1996.
Those notes detail attempts to establish Mr Desmond's financial standing.
Mr Loughrey rejected suggestions that, knowing as he did the findings the Glackin report had made regarding Mr Desmond, he should have pressed for a deeper investigation of the businessman's finances.
The Glackin inquiry investigated the sale of the Johnston Mooney and O'Brien site in Ballsbridge to Telecom Eireann in the late eighties.
It made several adverse findings against Mr Desmond, including that he had deliberately failed to disclose his interest in the JMOB site.
Earlier, Mr Loughrey said he could readily understand Tribunal concerns that the Department has no record of a series of important meetings held in the run up to the granting of the licence.
He said he didn't think for one moment that there was anything sinister in it.
Counsel for the Tribunal said they had great concern over the fact that the inquiry was told nothing about several meetings between members of Esat Digifone and the Department until they were referred to in a written statement provided by an executive with the Norwegian company, Telenor.
Tribunal lawyers say when they then went to the Department no one seemed to recollect the meetings and the Department had no documentary evidence.
Mr Loughrey has said he accepts that recording procedures may not have been adequate.
At one of these meetings Norwegian executive Arve Johannsen says it became clear to him that the involvement of Dermot Desmond's company IIU was not favoured by the Department 'from an Irish public point of view'.
He also says the Department asked for help in explaining to the public why the consortium had substituted other named institutional investors with Mr Desmond's company.
