Lowry ‘cleared of accelerating mobile licence award’

FORMER Communications Minister Michael Lowry has been exonerated from any involvement in speeding up the process of awarding the tender for the State’s second mobile phone licence, his senior counsel argued before the Moriarty Tribunal yesterday.

Documents, whose significance was only highlighted last week, show that civil servants and outside consultants involved in the evaluation of the tenders had laid down a time-table for the completion of the process.

This timetable was drawn up before Mr Lowry, after seeing the rankings of three of the bidders, is alleged to have told one civil servant he would like to see the process accelerated.