Madam, – Former taoiseach John Bruton’s declaration (Home News, April 7th) that the Moriarty tribunal offered no evidence to suggest that Michael Lowry influenced the outcome of the awarding of the second mobile phone licence in any way is totally at variance with the conclusions of the report. Indeed, given the comprehensive, detailed and highly forensic manner in which the activities of the former minister were examined by the tribunal, one has to ask: is the former taoiseach attempting to avoid ultimate responsibility for having failed to stop Mr Lowry undermining not only the reputation and credibility of the public service, but the country as a whole?
At the time we sought, with the members of our consortium, which included the ESB and Motorola, to get the then taoiseach to look at the way in which his minister, Michael Lowry, awarded the licence, because if he asked even rudimentary questions he could have averted the scandal uncovered by the tribunal, and which we have attempted to summarise below: 1. The tribunal report concluded that Mr Lowry pierced on a number of occasions what was supposed to have been a closed and independent process, run and managed by civil servants alone, and passed valuable information to Denis O’Brien and ultimately delivered the licence to him.
2. The report shows that despite valiant attempts continuing to undermine some of the key findings such as that Mr Lowry marked Denis O’Brien’s card in Hartigan’s pub on the poor financial standing of his consortium and how it might be improved, the fact remains that the tribunal discovered contemporaneous notes of a conversation by a senior executive of Telenor, Per Simonsen, to support that conclusion. Evidence, it should be underlined, that was confirmed under cross examination.
3. The report concluded that when Mr Lowry overruled the desire of the civil servants and rushed to government with a “result”, interrupting a Cabinet subcommittee, the outcome at that point was too close to call between Esat Digifone and Persona.
“It was accepted that the draft report was unsatisfactory and would require further work and clarification”.
4. The tribunal report noted that “The evaluation report contained no explanation as to how Esat Digifone which had never ranked higher than third place in the quantitative analysis was nonetheless nominated as the best applicant.”
5. The report found that the consultant who advised the department, Michael Andersen, who resisted coming to give evidence in public for several years initially failed to tell the tribunal, that he only did so “following interactions between Mr Andersen and Tom Reynolds, an associate and employee of Mr O’Brien, and following the provision by Mr O’Brien of an extensive indemnity to Mr Andersen in respect of his attendance as a witness”.
6. The tribunal found that there was: “Turbulent dissent within the project group and in particular between the two most senior and experienced principal officers.” Indeed, so serious was the division within the group that the civil servants were given a commitment by the then secretary general that they would have another week to consider their findings. As noted, Mr Lowry ensured they did not get that week.
7. Therefore, the tribunal discovered that when Mr Lowry interrupted that fateful government meeting being chaired by then taoiseach John Bruton he “did not have a copy of the final report” because one did not exist at that moment.
The last fact is especially worth reflecting on because had John Bruton even asked to read the final report, he might have exposed Mr Lowry. – Yours, etc,