Lowry: Tribunal just one man’s opinion

EMBATTLED TD Michael Lowry stepped up his attack on the Moriarty Tribunal claiming their findings would not stand up in a pub let alone a courtroom and that he had been a victim of a witch hunt.

Fighting to salvage his reputation, the angered Independent TD hit out at the mobile phone licence probe, the media, losing bidders for the contract, as well as his own colleagues.

The Tipperary politician claimed he had been put through a system of “Chinese torture” during the 14-year probe.

During an hour-long response on the tribunal’s findings, the former communications minister reiterated his denial that he had ever received any monies from Denis O’Brien, the businessman behind the licence bid.

“The Moriarty Tribunal has become a monster of extraordinary proportions feeding off itself and costing this country a fortune,” he told the Dáil.

Claims that he had benefited from monies and a loan totalling some St£900,000 from Mr O’Brien because of his role in influencing the licence winner were wrong, he said.

The inquiry had not been about “legal jurisprudence but about witch- hunting and scapegoating”, he said.

Earlier, opposition TDs reiterated calls for Mr Lowry to resign. But Mr Lowry said the report made “claims that wouldn’t stand up to scrutiny in the local pub let alone an esteemed courtroom”.

TDs were told by Mr Lowry that the rules of evidence were thrown out the window by the tribunal.

“What we are debating here today is one man’s opinion. It is not facts. It is not evidence based.”

A tribunal was no more than “a prosecution show trial”, he argued.

Lawyers for the tribunal had also worked privately with Mr Justice Moriarty, eaten with him and shared an office with him for 14 years, Mr Lowry said.

“In any other legal process, any relationship between the prosecution team and the judge during a trial would result in the collapse of the process.”

Mr Lowry argued that the tribunal had already admitted to a number of “grievous errors”, including changing its opinion on evidence given by the Attorney General’s office.

Danish telecoms consultant Michael Anderson had also “decisively ripped asunder” every theory that the tribunal had built up, he said.

Mr Lowry hit out at his fellow TDs for accepting Judge Moriarty’s words as though they were Gospel. He said: “Politics can be a very fickle pursuit.”

Quotes

* [The ‘thanks very much, big fella’ culture] is a culture typified by arrogant, mercenary and immoral politics that almost ruined our reputation and made a mockery of character itself. When that culture included business and banking it contaminated our country, divided our society and diminished our republic.

— Enda Kenny on previous corruption in Irish politics

* I say to deputies who make up the largest majority ever seen in this state that they have the numbers to shout down anyone if they wish; they have the numbers to vote through or block any business… The challenge ... is whether they will show themselves to be capable of putting aside the self-righteousness we saw during the election ... campaign and adhere to the standards we discussed on the first day of the Dáil term. We will see a lot from how they behave in this debate and how they react to legitimate questions, no matter how uncomfortable they are for them.

— Micheál Martin on Fine Gael TDs’ power and responses to tribunal

* It was not about evidence, but assumptions; it was not about truth, but self-justification and media soundbites; it was not about legal jurisprudence, but witch-hunting and scapegoating.

The tribunal was driven by forces and syndicates in this country whose vested interests, ambitions and greed were thwarted by a perfectly legitimate licence application procedure.

— Michael Lowry on the Tribunal