Michael Lowry (Tipperary North, Independent)

Against the background of this report, which is based on opinions, I can understand why the House wishes to table a motion of censure and I have no objection to it. I wish to place on the record my desire that when the Taoiseach and Ceann Comhairle are framing the wording of the motion of censure the House does not prejudice my position as a Member of the House and as a former Minister, and that it would not prejudice in any way the action I may take a future date.

I am sure the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources, Deputy Pat Rabbitte, has been well briefed by departmental officials. Will he confirm that the principal parameters of the competition for the second mobile phone licence were set down and agreed by the previous Government to the one of which I was a member and by my predecessor, Brian Cowen? Will he also confirm that the project team protocol applied only to the project team and not to the Cabinet or to the Minister of the day? It would be entirely impractical and completely unworkable to suggest that this protocol applied to anybody other than the members of the project team. It was the project team that had access to information, not the Cabinet or the Ministers including me. Will he also confirm that the then Government, of which he was a member, was a rainbow government with three leaders, namely, John Bruton, Dick Spring and Proinsias De Rossa. All of the serious decisions were always made in advance; whether it was a day, week, or morning prior to a Cabinet meeting they were cleared in principle by the three leaders. This was the standard practice when I was a member of that Government.

I have been damned by the Moriarty tribunal with regard to the licence because the report suggests that somehow I circumvented a decision of the Government. The protocol and procedures were advised to me by the then Secretary General of the Department, John Loughrey. If the Minister checks his files he will see that I acted at all times on his advice and in line with the clearing process that had become standard in that Government. Will the Minister agree that the idea of the Cabinet of that time being in a position to change a decision of a project team that we as a Government established would have been second guessing? We had an example of second guessing when the Meteor and Orange applications were brought to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court judges unanimously found that no Government could second guess the decision of an independent team with regard to an application. Does the Minister agree this applies to the decision made in 1995?

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