Lowry firm with Tipperary land not on TDs' register of interests

A COMPANY owned by the controversial Independent TD Michael Lowry and which does not appear on the register of members’ interests in the Oireachtas owns land in his constituency.

The land, slightly less than 11 acres, has a mortgage registered against it by the Irish Nationwide Building Society, which is now part of the Irish Bank Resolution Corporation.

It has also emerged that last year the Dublin firm of accountants, which acts for Mr Lowry’s companies, initiated High Court action against him. The case was discontinued. The reasons behind the case being initiated are not known. Efforts to contact Mr Lowry yesterday were not successful.

“We never discuss our clients’ business, especially with journalists,” said Neale O’Hanlon, a partner with BBT Accountants, Foxrock, Dublin, when asked about the case. “We have absolutely no comment at all.”

The case was filed in late May 2011 and discontinued two days later. A partner in the firm, Denis O’Connor, assisted Mr Lowry in his dealings with the Moriarty tribunal and was heavily criticised in its second report in relation to certain dealings with the tribunal.

The Oireachtas register of members’ interests states Mr Lowry is a director of Abbeygreen Consulting Ltd and of Garuda Ltd. A business premises in Tipperary owned by Garuda is declared in Mr Lowry’s entry in the register where members are asked to declare land they own.

However, Mr Lowry does not make any such declaration in relation to land owned by Abbeygreen.

Files in the Land Registry show Abbeygreen is the full owner of land at Gortnahoe, near Two-Mile Borris, in Co Tipperary.

The company is registered as having become the owner of the land on May 9th, 2011, two months after the Moriarty report was published.

The only existing mortgage on the file is dated April 2009 and is from the Irish Nationwide. The former managing director of Irish Nationwide, Michael Fingleton, resigned in April 2009.

The land was bought in October 2006 by a company called Horsebarrack Property Ltd, which has its address at the offices of Smithwick Walter and Son solicitors, Kilkenny. A mortgage in favour of AIB was cancelled at the time of the 2006 sale.

Mr Lowry does not declare in the Oireachtas register that he owns shares in both Abbeygreen and Garuda, although this is well known.

In August 1996, soon after he had become a government minister, Mr Lowry was given a 100 per cent Irish Nationwide loan by Mr Fingleton to buy a house in Blackrock, Co Dublin.