THE INDEPENDENT TD for Tipperary North, Michael Lowry, has said his failure to declare a company directorship on the register of deputies’ interests was not a breach of the rules.
Filings in the Companies Registration Office show Mr Lowry is a director of GDCL Business Consultants Ltd, with an address on Northumberland Road, Dublin.
The company was registered in August 2009. In an annual return filed for the year up to February 21st, 2010, Mr Lowry is described as a director. The return also said he owns 25 per cent of the company’s issued shares.
Mr Lowry did not declare the directorship in the Register of Members’ Interests for 2010, published recently by the Oireachtas. He did not declare the directorship for the 2009 register either.
The Oireachtas guidelines for TDs say they must declare any “directorship or shadow directorship of any company held by you at any time during the registration period concerned”.
When contacted, Mr Lowry said “there is a letter on the file for me, withdrawing from that company”.
No such letter shows on the files of the Companies Registration Office.
Mr Lowry said the company was just a “shelf company” that had never traded. He refused to say what the company’s purpose was.
“That’s none of your business,” he said. “In fact the other guys didn’t use that company, and the business that was proposed to be conducted was conducted through one of their companies and not that particular one.”
Mr Lowry’s fellow directors and shareholders in the company, according to the annual return, are Strabane-based property developer Seán Devine and businessmen Peter Cassidy, of Bray, Co Wicklow, and Dermot Gaskin, of Malahide, Co Dublin. The company has not yet filed accounts.
Mr Cassidy said the company was set up for a purpose which never happened. “It was just a lot of hot air.” The idea had nothing to do with property, but he did not want to say what the objective was. “We are in the process of getting rid of the company.”
He said it was not the case, as stated by Mr Lowry, that the project was progressed using another company. “It never got off the ground.”
Mr Devine did not return a telephone call to his office. Mr Gaskin was not available for comment.
Mr Devine has a very substantial property business in Northern Ireland and Britain. He and his business partner, Paul Blee, own a Dublin company called Dunlix Investments (Ireland) Ltd which owns a number of properties in Co Tipperary. The company also owns a site in Dublin which is to be the location for one of the Metro North stations if the project goes ahead.
Mr Devine was formerly a business partner of Omagh businessman Kevin Phelan, who has featured in the proceedings of the Moriarty tribunal. They were directors of a Bolton company called Omega Property Development Ltd.
Mr Phelan did not give evidence to the tribunal, which found that Mr Lowry received financial benefits from businessman Denis O’Brien, a finding which both Mr O’Brien and Mr Lowry have said is incorrect.