The businessman Denis O’Brien has welcomed the decision by the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) not to pursue criminal proceedings arising from the Garda inquiry into the Moriarty tribunal report on payments to politicians.
The 2011 report found the former minister for communications Michael Lowry interfered with the process that led to the awarding of a mobile phone licence to O’Brien’s consortium, Esat Digifone, in 1996, to the benefit of Esat.
It also found that financial links between the two men were referable to the licence award. Both men strongly contested the tribunal’s findings.
O’Brien, in a statement on Wednesday, said he was grateful to An Garda Síochána for their “thorough and diligent investigation” into the matters covered by the report and the detailed consideration given to the Garda file by the DPP.
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Attacks on the results of the second mobile phone licence competition had been going on since October 1995, he said, with the tribunal deciding, in 2001, to conduct a public inquiry into the process.
He said it had always been of great concern to him that one of the barristers working for the tribunal – the late Jerry Healy – had previously been a legal adviser to Persona, one of the unsuccessful bidders for the mobile phone licence, something he described as a conflict of interest.
O’Brien acknowledged that the task facing the tribunal chairman, Judge Michael Moriarty, had been a difficult one but said the tribunal had rejected evidence “unhelpful to the case being prosecuted by them”.
He cited as an example the involvement of Danish expert Michael Andersen, who gave evidence that supported O’Brien’s contention that the licence was fairly won by Esat, but whose evidence, O’Brien said, was “essentially ignored”.
“However well-intentioned they may have been at one point in history, tribunals of inquiry have proven to be desperately flawed (and I believe desperately unfair) means of investigating matters [such as those investigated by the Moriarty tribunal],” he said.
[ No criminal case against Michael Lowry over Moriarty tribunal findingsOpens in new window ]
Ultimately, he said, the tribunals did not serve the purpose for which they were intended, with their fact-finding mission being discarded and replaced, he said, by opinions and theories.
“I believe the Moriarty tribunal’s report was a clear manifestation of these fundamental structural shortcomings,” O’Brien said.
“It is clearly noteworthy that following a lengthy investigation by the competent legal authorities, applying the correct due process and appropriate legal standards, a decision has been taken not to pursue any prosecution.
“I am pleased to put this chapter behind me. This welcome decision of the DPP supports my position throughout that the evidence to support such claims of criminal wrongdoing never existed.”
The Garda inquiry initiated in the wake of the tribunal’s 2011 findings concluded in 2024 with the sending of a file to the DPP. Evidence gathered by a tribunal cannot be used in a criminal case and the Garda had to conduct its own, fresh inquiries.
Lowry, in a statement issued on Tuesday, also welcomed the DPP’s decision and said the tribunal’s findings had “allowed me to be subjected to repeated insults, smears and false allegations, with no legal remedy available to me”.
The report was “always flawed, not being based on hard facts or admissible evidence, but on conjecture, manipulation and speculation,” he said.
