ESAT ‘deal’ may have cost the city 1,200 jobs

Date Published: 24-Mar-2011

BY CIARAN TIERNEY

The controversial decision to award the country’s second mobile phone licence to Esat Digifone in 1995 may have cost Galway at least 1,200 jobs as one of the rival bidders intended to locate its national headquarters in the city.

Following this week’s publication of the Moriarty Tribunal, which found that then Minister for Communications Michael Lowry TD “secured the winning” of the competition for Esat Digifone, it has emerged that Galway was one of the big losers from the process.

North Galway businessman Declan Ganley, part of the Cellstar consortium which lost out to Esat Digifone and Denis O’Brien, confirmed to the Galway City Tribune yesterday that his group had intended to set up their national HQ in the city.

Mr Ganley, who has now called on Michael Lowry to “do the country a service” by resigning his seat in the Dáil, was part of an unsuccessful consortium which included Comcast, RTÉ, Bord na Mona, and CGI Ltd.

“It had been part of our bid that our headquarters would be located in Galway,” he said. “It was anticipated that we would create 1,200 jobs in year one and these jobs would not have been just in the core phone business.

“It was anticipated that there would have been a huge spin-off and there would have been considerable additional investment in the West of Ireland. There would have also been related jobs in Galway in QVC, the shopping channel, which was owned by Comcast, one of the main partners of the consortium. And we were among the early advocates of broadband, which we intended to roll out from our proposed Galway HQ.

“Remember this was in the mid-1990s, when such an investment would have had a really significant impact in Galway. The knock-on effect at that point would have been immense. It would have attracted other businesses.”

The tribunal report detailed payments made by entrepreneur Denis O’Brien for the benefit of Mr Lowry, now Independent TD for Tipperary North, following the awarding of the licence to Mr O’Brien’s Esat Digifone.

Mr Ganley and Comcast are hopeful that the Supreme Court will hear an appeal in relation to the awarding of the licence in the next four to six weeks

For more on this story, see the Galway City Tribune.