Shielded by Dáil privilege, Lowry takes aim at Judge Moriarty

If Michael Lowry was speaking from the heart, he didn’t appear to move any of his colleagues in the Dáil last night

ONE MORNING in 1997, a judge of the High Court rolled out of his bed and made an executive decision: “From this day on, I am going to devote the next 14 years of my life to stitching up a Dáil deputy. I have arrived at a predetermined conclusion and, come what may, I will reach it.”

And so began the Payments to Politicians inquiry and over a decade of “Chinese torture” for Michael Lowry.

He suffered it at the hands of Judge Michael Moriarty, who, if Deputy Lowry is to be believed, has been conducting a vendetta against him in order to justify his stewardship of this lengthy and expensive exercise.

But does anybody really buy Lowry’s argument? It doesn’t make sense. When he published his report last week, the tribunal chairman came down hard on the Independent TD for Tipperary North. Lowry is vigorously disputing the findings. He took his battle to the floor of the Dáil last night.

“I do not accept the contents of this report and I never will,” he declared to a less than sympathetic audience.

He was the final speaker in the first of two days to be spent discussing the report and its fallout. He had an hour to speak and still couldn’t fit in everything he had to say.

Given that most of his contribution was given over to traducing Michael Moriarty and his Dublin Castle team, Lowry could have completed his arguments within the half hour if he hadn’t been so intent on attacking the tribunal.

There can be no arguing that Lowry is angry and that he feels hard done by. His anger was obvious as he spoke. It’s an emotional subject for him.

As far as the report is concerned, “I know it to be wrong and I will not cower in some dark corner after being kicked from pillar to post, and refuse to call a spade a spade.”

To this end, he directed his ire at Judge Moriarty, whom he feels can say whatever he wants about anybody he chooses without any adverse consequences.

Lowry, adopting a Harry Potteresque approach, intimated that people are powerless against the might of Moriarty with his “impenetrable cloak of infallibility” and his “shield of invincibility”. But not so.

Deputy Lowry, holding his shield of parliamentary privilege and wearing his Dáil immunity, could say what he liked last night without fear of recrimination.

And he did.

“Mr Moriarty is a great man to coin a media-friendly phrase, designed to grab a headline,” he told the Dáil in the course of an addressed littered with one-liners. It was also an address that was short of much substance and long on rhetoric.

Take away the vicious criticisms of Michael Moriarty and his tribunal process – which hasn’t always covered itself in glory, to be fair – and there wasn’t that much for him to say.

If Lowry was speaking from the heart, he didn’t appear to move any of his colleagues. As he ran short of time and the acting Ceann Comhairle called on him to finish up, he pleaded for an extension.

“Give us the script!” snorted Ming Flanagan.

Aengus Ó Snodaigh shrugged that he’d have a second chance to speak today.

At one point, Lowry urged his colleagues to read the transcript of the tribunal, rather than rely on the report. In particular, he referred them to evidence given by Michael Andersen, a Norwegian telecommunications expert. “Who paid Andersen to attend?” asked Labour’s Emmet Stagg.

On and on went Lowry with the litany of what wrongs had been perpetrated against him by Moriarty who “assumed the role of judge, jury, prosecutor and executioner all rolled into one”.

Across the floor, the man with whom he once shared a cabinet room looked away. Lowry looked at him as he spoke, but Enda Kenny averted his eyes; looked down his hands.

When Lowry concluded, he did so in silence. Nobody said a word to him. He will have more to say today – not that there seems much of an appetite for it from his colleagues.

Meanwhile, the House spent the best part of the day dealing with the report and how it affects Fine Gael.

There are questions to be answered by the party, but luckily for them, what happened took place at a remove of 14 years and there are also questions remaining for their main Opposition too.

In another happy twist, the results of the bank stress test are being published tomorrow and the decks will be cleared.

All that we know is that some people have been very badly ballyragged – but only one of them is taking the Michael.