Joe Higgins (Dublin West, Socialist Party)

The second report on the awarding of the second mobile telephone licence to Esat Digifone found that the Minister with responsibility for communications acted in a way that was disgraceful and insidious and had irregular interaction with interested parties at the most sensitive stages. It found that Deputy Lowry gave substantial information to Mr. Denis O'Brien which was of significant value and assistance to him in securing the licence.

Does the Minister recall that Mr. O'Brien later sold this licence and made a personal profit of £250 million? He should have paid £50 million in the then low corporation tax but he was not obliged to pay because he was a tax exile, courtesy of legislation passed by the Dáil. Does this not amount to shocking corporate and political corruption involving a Government Minister and a leading businessman? Does it not amount to wealth which properly belonged to the Irish people, who owned the licence, being passed to the enrichment of a private individual? Does the Minister agree that, as an initial response, the Criminal Assets Bureau should now seek to recover the £250 million profit made by Mr. O'Brien as a result of a corrupt relationship and restore it to the Irish people for the funding of their services, and so on?

Is the Minister aware that the tribunal found that Mr. Denis O'Brien instigated a donation of $50,000 to the Fine Gael Party, which the tribunal said was made in a manner which, having regard to its false and misleading documentation, was secretive, utterly lacking in transparency and designed to conceal the fact of such payment by or on behalf of the donors? Does the Minister agree that it is a shocking indictment of the Fine Gael Party to accept such a donation when this individual was to benefit from an enormous enrichment as a result of a licence given to him by a Fine Gael majority Government? What might the implications be for the unsuccessful bidders? How will the information contained in the report affect the liability of the State towards others who may attempt to recover the money they lost as a result of a shadowy deal?

The tribunal says Deputy Lowry deprived Cabinet colleagues of an opportunity to scrutinise and review the result and sought to overreach his own party leader, the then Taoiseach, former Deputy John Bruton, by intimating that Government should have no discretion in the matter. I ask the Minister to recall his own time in Government. He attended Cabinet meetings at that time. Does he agree that the report is a stunning indictment of the workings of that Fine Gael-Labour Party Cabinet? What does he recall from that time and what were his impressions of being manipulated and railroaded by one particular Minister?

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