O’Reilly: I had no input in ‘payback’ editorial

THE OWNER of the Irish Independent, Dr Tony O’Reilly, denied having any responsibility for the Payback Time editorial on the front page of the newspaper on the day of the 1997 General Election.

The editorial urged voters to pay the coalition back for bleeding them dry on taxation. Readers were urged to defeat the Fine Gael-led Rainbow Coalition.

This editorial had nothing to do with him, Dr O’Reilly, chairman of Independent News and Media (IN&M), said yesterday. All his editors were independent, he said. Neither he nor members of the board of IN&M had any input into the decision.

Agreeing it was “unusual” for an editorial to appear on a front page, Dr O’Reilly pointed out that Fine Gael had increased its Dáil representation after the election.

“The front-page editorial appeared to help them,” he said.

The editorial, under the headline “Payback Time”, was not motivated by grievances over the issuing of the State’s second mobile phone licence or its failure to act against unlicenced television deflector operators, Dr O’Reilly said.

He refuted the suggestion that Independent Newspapers was the “focus of hostility” against the then Minister for Communications, Michael Lowry - who was responsible for the phone licence award and broadcasting.

Meanwhile, Dr O’Reilly also insisted at the Moriarty Tribunal yesterday that Mr Lowry told him “your fellas didn’t do too well” with their oral presentation for the country’s second mobile phone licence.

Dr O’Reilly said this conversation took place just after Mr Lowry had officially opened the Galmoy zinc mine in Co Kilkenny, on September 15, 1995.

Mr Lowry explained he was referring to the presentations by applicants for the second mobile phone licence. Dr O’Reilly said he was unaware his consortium had made a presentation the previous day.

Dr O’Reilly’s Independent Newspapers Ltd was among six companies &bidding for the GSM2 licence.

He rejected a suggestion by tribunal lawyer John Coughlan SC, that he made up the conversation to cause trouble for Mr Lowry because he was aggrieved the former minister and his department were not enforcing the law against TV deflector pirates.

“I have no malice whatsoever against Mr Lowry, and certainly I had no malice whatsoever in regard to this matter,” said Dr O’Reilly.

If Mr Lowry had made this comment, said Mr Coughlan, it would show the sealed process by which civil servants selected the winning GSM2 consortium, may have been compromised.

Asked if he demanded Mr Lowry shut down TV deflector pirates, Dr O’Reilly said this was something Independent Newspapers and its equity partners, who had invested £75 million (€95m) in the television signal retransmission business, felt strongly about. They felt the Government was not taking sufficient action to enforce the law and close down these illegal operators.

Meanwhile, former Tánaiste and Labour leader, Dick Spring, described to the tribunal how Mr Lowry told him and other members of the Government sub-committee on October 25, 1995, that Denis O’Brien’s Esat Digifone consortium was the “clear winner” of the GSM2 competition.

They had no reason to question the result.