Denis O'Brien has rejected the findings of the Moriarty Tribunal report, saying he never paid 'a red cent' to Michael Lowry. Speaking on RTE's 6.1 News, Mr O'Brien said the report was fundamentally flawed.
He said there was absolutely no evidence and nobody gave evidence to the tribunal to say that Esat Digifone won the licence unfairly or had any benefit of favouritism. He said the report was based on hearsay and innuendo.
Mr O'Brien said he gave unfettered access to all his bank accounts and all his diaries, so nobody could ever say that his company did not win the licence fairly.
Earlier, a statement from Michael Lowry described the report's findings as 'factually wrong and deliberately misleading'.
Mr Lowry said Judge Moriarty had 'outrageously abused the Tribunal's ability to form opinions which were not substantiated by evidence'.
It was, he said, 'preposterous' of the Tribunal to form an opinion that all the state officials involved in the licence process and Danish consultant Michael Anderson had effectively lied under oath.
Mr Lowry's statement claims that from the outset the Tribunal was biased. It 'beggared belief', he said, that Judge Moriarty could ignore extensive evidence given to the Tribunal which clearly confirmed that he did not influence the project team.
Tribunal wanted 'a result' - Desmond
Meanwhile, businessman Dermot Desmond said he believed that the Tribunal had been prejudicial in its approach from the outset. He said it had a vested interest in achieving a 'result' because of the length of time it had taken, and the cost of its investigations.
'At over 1,500 pages the Moriarty Report is the most lengthy and expensive comic ever produced,' his statement said.
Mr Desmond said the mobile competition was adjudicated on by 15 to 20 civil servants with an independent consultant and independently decided on, without the involvement of Michael Lowry or any other politician.
He said each of the civil servants gave testimony under oath that Mr Lowry had not suborned or attempted to suborn them or the process. 'No evidence was put forward to the contrary,' Mr Desmond said, adding that any interactions between Denis O'Brien and Michael Lowry were 'sideshows' to the central issue of the award of the licence.
