A senior civil servant has told the Moriarty Tribunal that he became concerned about what he called the speeding up of the competition for the state's second mobile phone licence.
Sean McMahon said that in the very last days leading up to the award he felt that concerns he and others had about the competition were not given the attention that was due to them.
Mr McMahon said his concerns centred on the quality of the final report.
He said that two days before the minister announced that Esat had won the competition, there was a very strong view among department officials that they had a clear winner. In his opinion that result was 'probably' correct.
But Mr McMahon said he felt the final report could not substantiate this conclusion. To call for a decision from the minister Michael Lowry on the basis of the report would have been very risky.
Mr McMahon said it was difficult to argue this at the time because officials knew that the minister wanted the result that day.
He did not want to give the impression that civil servants were cowed by this but nonetheless, he said, the spectre was there.
Sean McMahon agreed that political or ministerial pressure was exerted on civil servants in the final weeks of the competition to get them to conclude the process.
He also agreed that that pressure was brought to bear at a moment when members of the evaluation group were looking for more time in order to carry out more scrutiny of the bids for the licence.
