Lowry ‘pressurised ESB to allow Esat masts’

FORMER Communications Minister Michael Lowry put the ESB under pressure to allow Esat Digifone masts and antennae for mobile phones onto some of its key sites, the Moriarty Tribunal was told yesterday.

The minister threatened to introduce regulations to force ESB to allow the Esat masts, if the ESB was unwilling to co-operate.

At the time, ESB was a member of the Persona Telephony Company consortium next in line to be considered for the second GSM licence if Denis O’Brien’s Digifone failed to satisfy the requirements for the issuing of the licence. Mr Lowry applied pressure on ESB to allow the Esat masts and antennae on its properties four months after Esat had been granted the licence. However, the licence was subject to a number of conditions, and if Esat failed to meet these, then the consortium the ESB was part of would have been awarded the licence.