FF will bring motion to Dáil if Lowry fails to resign

FIANNA FÁIL leader Micheál Marting has called on former minister Michael Lowry to “consider his position and resign from Dáil Éireann”.

If he did not stand down, the party would propose a motion “expressing the will of the Dáil on this matter” and expected it to be taken in Government time as an all-party motion.

He also said the Moriarty report made a “clear and serious finding of evasion against Fine Gael” in relation to the $50,000 Telenor donation to the party.

Mr Martin said Taoiseach Enda Kenny had tried to “make a virtue” of returning the donation, when it took three years to do so. He rejected Mr Kenny’s claim that the tribunal had “commended” Fine Gael as a “deliberate misrepresentation of the report and a refusal to acknowledge a clear and serious finding of evasion” against the party.

He said Mr Justice Moriarty had drawn a “damning conclusion on Fine Gael’s concealment of the Telenor cheque”.

The Fianna Fáil leader also rejected Mr Kenny’s claim that the report exonerated the other members of the then government. “The report does nothing of the sort.” He said it was “very clear” from the report that a responsibility rested upon all of those ministers who were members of the cabinet in 1995 for how they allowed the process they agreed in March of that year “to be subverted”.

Rounding on Fine Gael he said the party wanted to “draw a line but admit no errors. They want to propose reform, all of which is ready to implement and agreed by all parties, but do not want to admit their part in practices which need to be reformed. They want to operate to a grossly hypocritical tactic of talking about accountability for the past of every party except those that make up the Government.”

He said his party would bring a motion to the House if Mr Lowry did not resign as a TD. It was done “in the case of the late Liam Lawlor and while the all-party motion did not cause his resignation, it did mark an important public statement of standards by this House”.

He said the report also raised questions about Minister for the Environment Phil Hogan, who had no recollection of a meeting with Esat Digifone boss Denis O’Brien. He said Mr Hogan was involved in Fine Gael receiving a large donation from Mr O’Brien at a time when he was aware Esat was competing for the mobile phone licence. “It is now incumbent on the Taoiseach to give his view on the credibility of a Government member whose evidence has not been accepted by a tribunal established by the Oireachtas.”

In reference to a £4,000 donation by Mr O’Brien to a Fine Gael golf classic, Mr Martin said the donation was at a critical point in the licence award process. Referring to the role of commentator Sarah Carey, then an Esat employee, Mr Martin said that while she was a minor figure in the whole affair, her “approach to the tribunal has been illustrative of a much wider strategy followed by others. When caught out, her approach had been to minimise the issue and look for distractions.

“Her lie to the tribunal related to when she leaked material in a vain attempt to spread Fine Gael’s pain to others.” Mr Martin also defended the tribunal report and said it had been subjected to “unprecedented attempts to misrepresent its contents”.