Denis O'Brien and Michael Lowry linked at the Moriarty Tribunal

BY ROBBIE MacGABHANN

The public hearings of the Moriarty Tribunal ground to a halt this week amid bitter acrimony between the family of former ESAT founder and leading entrepreneur Denis O'Brien and the chairperson of the Moriarty Tribunal.

However, before the decent into allegations of bias, the public got a remarkable insight into how business is done in Ireland. There were two Irelands on show, that of a golden circle of backhanders and favours and that of buffoonery and deception.

The Tribunal is investigating the financial dealings of Denis O'Brien and allegations that he paid former Fine Gael minister for Public Enterprise, Michael Lowry and others large sums of money running to hundreds of thousands of pounds.

Lowry was the minister whose decision to give ESAT the second mobile phone licence in the 26 Counties pulled the company back from the brink of bankruptcy and made O'Brien a multi-millionaire. O'Brien later sold ESAT to BT for over £2 billion, netting himself £230 million.

So far the tribunal has uncovered a donation to Fine Gael of £33,000 from ``ESAT interests'', given to the party in early 1996. The Tribunal has also uncovered £147,000 sterling lodged in 1996 to an Isle of Man account belonging to Michael Lowry. In 1998, Lowry invested £25,000 in a British property, where another £225,000 used to secure the deal came from one of Denis O'Brien's British bank accounts.

In 1999, a similar transaction transpired again with O'Brien's money underpinning a Lowry property deal. There are other aspects to decisions taken by Lowry that favoured the ESAT business. Lowry extended the closing date for tenders for the mobile phone licence. One Sunday Newspaper claims that this helped O'Brien who was having difficulty putting together his international consortium for the bid. Lowry gave ESAT access to the then Telecom Eireann phone network, citing EU competition requirements. No other phone company was given such access.

O'Brien will claim to the Tribunal that allegations made by Barry Maloney, former chief executive of ESAT Digifone, of a £100,000 ``success fee'' to Michael Lowry were a ``joke''.

O'Brien has admitted hiring consultants and lobbyists to help with the ESAT bid. He admits he falsely claimed having given £200,000 to Lowry and another person. O'Brien and Maloney used to ``spoof a lot... At least half of what we said was bravado'' according to O'Brien.

Whatever about the bravado, O Brien has ended up one of Ireland's richest people, while the then Fine Gael, Labour and Democratic Left's government's business practices have been called seriously into question.

It was never envisaged that the Moriarty Tribunal would investigate the winning of the second mobile phone license, now it seems that it could be one of its most important areas of work.