Civil servants 'did not collude with Lowry'

Greater precautions ought to have been taken to ensure that former minister Michael Lowry could not influence the outcome of the competition to award the State’s second mobile phone licence, the Moriarty tribunal report said.

However, the tribunal rejected claims that a number of civil servants had colluded with Mr Lowry to deliver the second mobile licence to Esat Digifone.

The Moriarty tribunal’s second and final report, which was published online this morning, says responsibility for the breaching of the award process rests with Mr Lowry, but was also due to “systematic failures” within his department.

The tribunal’s report states that greater precautions ought to have been taken to segregate those conducting the evaluation of the process from their political master.

The absence of the department’s then secretary general during much of the bid process led to Mr Lowry dealing with less experienced civil servants, the report says.

The report adds that those officials conducting the review had no means of knowing that Mr Lowry was conveying information to Mr O'Brien, or any other interested party, and had no reason to suspect Mr Lowry's motives.

It states that while there was no doubt department officials desired a “decisive, efficient and productive process” they “unwittingly” lost sight of the fact the competition was intended to be an independent adjudicative process to be conducted in a technically appropriate, robust and objective manner.

“It was undoubtedly the case that the tribunal’s investigations were personally and professionally discomforting for those officials, who through no fault of their own, found themselves at the intersection of an irregular and improper relationship between politics and business, in the persons of Mr Michael Lowry and Mr Denis O’Brien, of which they had no knowledge at the time,” the report adds.

The tribunal said claims that department officials had colluded with Mr Lowry were “groundless, uninformed and bereft of the slightest objectivity”.