Moriarty hears about $50,000 Telenor donation

The Moriarty Tribunal has resumed after the summer recess and has begun hearing evidence of a $50,000 donation from former ESAT chairman Denis O’Brien to Fine Gael.

A senior executive from Norwegian firm Telenor told the tribunal this morning that Mr O’Brien travelled to Oslo to meet the company’s chief executive in December 1995.

Following that meeting, the chief executive ordered that $50,000 dollars be paid to an Irish political party. An invoice for the sum was sent to ESAT, which had agreed to reimburse the money.

Although the executive giving evidence today could not remember the name of the political party to which the money was paid, the donation has already been the subject of embarrassment for Fine Gael.

The party sent the money back to Telenor this year, five years after it was originally donated and only after the media had latched onto the story.

The money was donated shortly after Michael Lowry, then Communications Minister in the Fine Gael-led rainbow government, had awarded a valuable mobile phone licence to ESAT.