Denis O'Brien has told the Moriarty Tribunal that details of an internal investigation in Esat would have been calamitous for the flotation of the company if they had been made public. Mr O'Brien was being questioned about the investigation carried out by the company into a possible payment of £100,000 to Michael Lowry. Tribunal lawyers brought him through the notes of that investigation today.
John Coughlan SC for the Tribunal said that Mr O'Brien had given two different stories about comments that he made in 1996 about a payment to the former Minister for Communications. Mr O'Brien said that a remark to his friend and former Esat Digifone executive Barry Maloney was a joke. However, he also admitted that he had considered paying Mr Lowry £100,000 but then thought better of it. He said that could have been on his mind when he made the comment to Mr Maloney. Mr Coughlan said that the Tribunal now wanted to know which version was true. Mr O'Brien said that both were true. He still stood over his statement that it was said in jest and was just bravado between friends.
When lawyers investigated this matter before the flotation of Esat Digifone, Mr O'Brien said that he questioned Barry Maloney's motives for raising the issue. He said that he was not calling Mr Maloney's character into question but believed that he was motivated by something other than his duty as a chief executive.
Earlier today, Mr O'Brien admitted that he was in Dublin over the past week. The businessman explained that he and his wife had stopped off briefly in Dublin to show his mother-in-law their new child. Mr O'Brien had been asked by reporters on his arrival at the Tribunal why his Gulfstream jet had been in Dublin over the past week. He explained that the stopover was on the couple's journey back home to Portugal.
The former chairman of Esat Digifone had absented himself from the Tribunal following the birth of his second child. Mr O'Brien travelled to London eleven days ago for the birth of his daughter. The Tribunal had been told that there were complications in his wife's pregnancy. It then emerged that Mr O'Brien's Gulfstream jet made a number of journeys between London, Dublin and the couple's home in Portugal over the past week.
