That’s the other side of it. The uncle toms and indo towers will shortly express their outrage to the cost of the tribunals to the Irish taxpayer they are so fond of. Nothing to do with their rich masters not wanting their corrupt dealings investigated of course.
If the government doesn’t vow to put Lowry behind bars we can draw a line under the Irish Republic. Dead and buried.
You can draw a line in the sand. And a different line under Ben Dunne’s nose.
Can someone explain to me what the INM agenda is on this?
Why aren’t they reporting on it? Wasn’t Sir Anthony involved in a competing bid for the license won by ESAT?
As an aside, the Independent website rarely updated during the day, as far as I know it’s updated early in the morning and that’s it.
O’Brien is a major shareholder-himself and O’Reilly were initially hostile to each other but they had to do a deal a couple of years back to basically save INM
I’d expect Sinn Fein to do well out of this. Pearse Doherty does anger very well and there’s an ocean of anger to be tapped at the moment. Is there any chance of Labour making a stand?
This is true.
Ah yes, had forgotten about his INM investment.
Not quite. Broadsheet had two screenshots from the site today. The first had no mention of the report whatsoever, the second has a small mention of the publication of the report, and a reference to Ben Dunne. So it was updated, but they blatantly chose not to cover it.
13 years though.
Come on.
It is ‘beyond doubt’ that Michael Lowry imparted substantive information to Denis O’Brien which was ‘of significant value and assistance to him in securing the licence’.
Mr Lowry deprived the Government of its decision-making function. The Tribunal’s report describes Mr Lowry has having a ‘strategy’ of depriving Government of an opportunity to scrutinise and review the result of the process.
Mr Lowry bypassed consideration by his Cabinet colleagues and thereby not only influenced, but delivered the result for Esat Digifone.
Mr O’Brien made or facilitated payments to Mr Lowry of £147,000 Sterling, £300,000 Sterling and a benefit equivalent to a payment in the form of Mr O’Brien’s support for a loan of £420,000 Sterling.
In advance of the closing date of the competition, Esat Digifone had available to it confidential information regarding the weighting matrix adopted by the project group that it was not entitled to have.
The report refers to Mr Lowry’s ‘cynical and venal abuse of office’ and his brazen refusal to acknowledge the impropriety of his financial arrangements with Denis O’Brien and Ben Dunne.
Mr Lowry used a ‘groundless rumour’ relating to the Persona consortium to his advantage and displayed an appreciable interest in the process and had irregular interactions with interested parties at its most sensitive stages.
The ‘most pervasive and abusive instance’ of Mr Lowry’s influence was his action in withdrawing time from the Project Group, when it had requested an extension to its work because it was not convinced that Esat Digifone should be nominated as the winner.
Mr Lowry ‘misled’ the party leaders as to the clarity and certainty of the result that he had recommended.
Mr Lowry sought to overreach his own party leader, John Bruton, by ‘intimating that the Government should have no discretion’ in the matter.
The $50,000 donation to Fine Gael was made through Telenor on behalf of Esat Digifone.
The tribunal report criticises the Fine Gael party for not revealing the clandestine nature of the €50,000 donation made by Denis O’Brien after his company won the mobile phone licence.
The report finds that Michael Lowry displayed qualities ‘similar in nature’ to Charles Haughey and says Lowry’s actions have cast a ‘further shadow’ over this country’s public life.
The Moriarty Tribunal has described Michael Lowry’s actions in influencing the awarding of the mobile phone licence as ‘disgraceful’ and ‘insidious’.
Mr Moriarty says greater precautions ought to have been taken to segregate those conducting the evaluation of the process from their political master.
Cheers Runt. Vincent Browne will be unmissable tonight.
Anton Savage, blueshirt spin-doctor :rolleyes: , is hosting the Last Word this evening.
A scathing rebuke of the establishment on the way then.
Does anyone really care anymore?
I do Mac.
Good summary.
I hate John Bruton but in relation to points 11 and 12 it is worth mentioning that he wasn’t happy accepting the donation so he rejected it eventually. Doesn’t excuse FG from their complicit assistance to the secrecy of the transactions but it does reflect a bit better on Bruton.
Forgot that Savage was doing the Last Word this week… himself and Hook on the fucking airwaves. Don’t have much time for Mary Wilson but Christ they’re shit alternatives.
denis o’brien :
“It is extremely disturbing that the chairman of this tribunal would choose to ignore the sworn evidence of the Department of Finance, , five Government ministers and one former Taoiseach”
:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:
I think ya might have jumped the gun on this one a small bit. The boys are prob right they leave their main stories as the ones in the morning’s paper usually. They will almost certainly have this as lead story in tomorrow’s paper. Although they’d love not to, the shower of bastards.
Lowry comes from a respectable family, one brother institutionally corrupt and the other a paedophile.
I was listening to The Last Word coming home and when they had finished up talking about Moriarty I was thinking this really is a holaboola over nothing with no evidence backing it up, but then Cal Thomas came on, so I switched over to Drive Time and they had a fella on who laid it all out and said exactly what went on :lol:
If the world actually paid any real attention to what goes on here this entire episode, combined with the supercasino in Two-Mile Borris, would be utterly humiliating.