Norwegian insists O’Brien said Lowry had advised him

NORWEGIAN executive Per Simonsen insisted at the Moriarty Tribunal yesterday that Esat Digifone chairman Denis O’Brien told him Communications Minister Michael Lowry had suggested, when the two Irishmen met in a Dublin pub, that he get financier Dermot Desmond to back the Digifone consortium.

Mr Simonsen, who was employed as a project manager with Norwegian state telecoms company Telenor, told tribunal lawyer Jerry Healy SC he could not remember when and where his conversation with Mr O’Brien took place.

He thought it happened during the last two weeks of September, 1995, when the Irish/Norwegian consortium had put in its successful bid to win the country’s second mobile phone licence competition.