Change the record
The talk in Kildare Street is of a new dawn. A history-making coalition is being welded together. Perforce, goes the narrative, it will be the most radical, left-wing government in the state’s history because, arithmetically, Fianna Fail and Fine Gael cannot govern without a third partner and all the other potential parties are liberal lefties. The people voted for change and, predict the political sages, by golly they’re going to get it — a single-tier health system, income equality, houses for everyone, clean air and rivers and streams. Bye-bye, survival-of-the-fittest rat race; hello, brave new world.
The hammer of reality came crashing into this utopian vision on Monday, courtesy of an image captured through a glass, darkly, by a television camera. The cameo was of two men in animated discussion inside a downstairs window of Leinster House. Both were former ministers for communications. Both were forced to resign from Fine Gael-led cabinets because of their conduct in office. And now, both are in negotiations to be involved in the next government. Both have emerged as de facto lead strategists for the Regional Group of independents, making it likely that one of them will be back at the cabinet table by the summer. The other could be a junior minister. The gentlemen’s names are Michael Lowry and Denis Naughten.
On March 29, 2011, Micheál Martin, the putative incoming taoiseach, branded Lowry a “rogue minister”. The Fianna Fail leader was speaking in a debate about the Moriarty tribunal report, which found Lowry, while minister, had helped Denis O’Brien to win the state’s second mobile phone licence and that the businessman had enriched the politician by a value exceeding €1m. Moriarty also found Lowry, as minister, had tried to inflate rent paid by then semi-state company Telecom Eireann to benefit Ben Dunne, its landlord. Dunnes Stores had paid for work on Lowry’s home in Co Tipperary, which was not declared to Revenue. Moriarty said Lowry’s attempt to jack up the rent was “profoundly corrupt”.
Martin called for Lowry to resign. Subsequently, the Dail passed a cross-party motion, without need of a vote, asking the TD to go. He didn’t. He has remained, uncontrite. Gradually, his old party has rehabilitated Lowry into the ring of political respectability, so grateful for his support from the opposition benches that he has been allowed to make big-spend announcements for his constituency ahead of any official statement.
In the interim, Lowry has been found guilty by the Circuit Court of two tax offences relating to his company Garuda Ltd. He was fined and banned from holding any company directorship until 2021. Yet he is preparing to be a pillar of the next government, this politician whom his peers considered unfit even to be a TD and whom the state deems unfit to be a company director. What message will this send to gardai who, we are assured, continue to investigate Moriarty’s findings, including IR£147,000 (€186,650) paid into an Isle of Man bank account for Lowry’s benefit? Indeed, what message does it send to us, the people, as the state forks out vast costs in defending a High Court claim for compensation by some losing bidders for the second mobile phone licence?
Five years after Moriarty’s report was published, and 20 years after Lowry’s resignation as minister, Denis Naughten, an independent TD who’d left Fine Gael over a constituency issue, took over as minister for communications. The biggest item on his desk was to deliver the contract for the €2.9bn national broadband plan. In the aftermath of the 11-year Moriarty tribunal’s investigation of that same department, Naughten might have been expected to tread ultra-carefully. But, no, he wined and dined with the ultimately successful bidder, David McCourt, with gusto.
On October 11, 2018, Leo Varadkar told the Dail that Naughten had disclosed to him the previous night that he attended one private dinner with the businessman, in addition to another in a New York restaurant the previous July. There were “at least three other private dinners” with McCourt. Varadkar said he had asked the communications minister to “reflect on his position”, a euphemism for “resign”.
The taoiseach said he had no doubt Naughten’s intentions were honourable but he had “left himself open to allegations of a conflict of interest and an inappropriate relationship with Mr McCourt, [thus] potentially jeopardising the project”. Naughten’s resignation speech was ungracious. He said the need for him to resign was “more about opinion polls than telephone poles [and] more about optics than fibre optics”.
Afterwards, his department revealed it had relied on the financial health of McCourt’s exceedingly rich brother, Frank McCourt, in assessing the funding capacity of his bid. Frank McCourt had also attended the dinner in New York, when the discussion covered a state requirement that funding should be in place by August 15 for the broadband contract. Since then, Naughten has ignored questions about his interactions with Frank McCourt and what he disclosed to Peter Smyth, an independent auditor who gave the process a clean bill of health.
Naughten is the convenor of the Regional Group of nine independents. The camera that espied him and Lowry through the window on Monday night had earlier filmed them walking purposefully up Kildare Street. They were accompanied by a companion, another would-be member of the next government. His name is Noel Grealish. Last September, he told a public meeting in Oughterard, Co Galway, at which objections were raised to the planned accommodation of asylum seekers: “These are people that are coming over here from Africa . . . to sponge off the system here in Ireland.”
In November, Grealish talked in the Dail of “astronomical” sums of money being transferred to Nigeria, citing €3.5bn. The true figure is €17m a year. Eoghan Murphy, the housing minister, said Grealish’s remarks were “disgusting and potentially dangerous”. Varadkar said he should apologise for them. He hasn’t. Now they’re parlaying with him as a potential partner in a government that is expected to abolish the cruelly congregated direct provision system for asylum seekers. Folks, change might take a while.
On Monday, the Regional Group pressed Fianna Fail and Fine Gael to set a deadline for other parties to come to the negotiating table. The optimistic interpretation is that the group realises it may figure only in the big parties’ plan B, should the Greens fail to join them. Fianna Fail and Fine Gael are savvy enough to know a pact with the likes of Lowry and Naughten would be bad for the optics and the polls. Equally, Lowry, Naughten and Grealish must realise they could be used as three stooges in government formation.
Damage is done, though. A change-averse tone for the next government has been set subliminally by the footsy-playing with TDs who are the antithesis of reform and should only ever be part of a plan Z.
That’s Z for zero.
Hard to disagree with most of that.
Bringing Lowry back like 
It’s a wonder Bertie hasn’t come out of a kitchen press somewhere
The electorates of Tipperary , Galway west and Roscommon spoke on these men . Tough cheese Justine
A racist and 2 disgraced, corrupt ex ministers. It’s The Dream Team Baby!
@Copper_pipe @dodgy_keeper what has ROD lined up for ye? Ballingarry GAA will surely get an auld stand out of it or something
I’d say Angela Kerin is limbering up
Danny Healy Rae a junior minister at agriculture would be some craic
They are giving DHR the environment ministry
The Greens getting rightly mugged off. We’ll get our motorway to Cork yet
Dept of Environment and Drink-Driving
I think he would have a better aptitude for an agricultural ministry but that’s just me .
This will save Munster rugby
A “drink driving test” to be introduced for lads that can handle their liquor. Four pints with the instructor before you head out
As Maggie thatcher said greens are like tomatoes… They start out green but end up red…
She brought Britain to its knees
DHR and aptitude in the same sentence?
He would buy and sell you and me combined kid