Businessman Denis O'Brien has welcomed a decision by the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) not to go ahead with criminal proceedings following the findings of the Moriarty Tribunal which were published in 2011.
In a statement, Mr O'Brien said the decision had been confirmed to him in recent days.
He said: "I am pleased to put this chapter behind me. This welcome decision of the DPP supports my position throughout that the evidence to support such claims of criminal wrongdoing never existed."
His comments follow a statement from Independent TD Michael Lowry last night, who said "there will be no charges brought against me arising from the findings of the Moriarty Tribunal".
Mr Lowry said the findings of the Tribunal were "always flawed, not being based on hard facts or admissible evidence, but on conjecture, manipulation and speculation".
The findings of the Tribunal were published 15 years ago and examined the 1995 award of Ireland’s second mobile phone licence to Denis O’Brien’s Esat Digifone.
Listen: No charges against Michael Lowry over Moriarty Tribunal findings
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Following the award of the licence, Mr Lowry, who was then Fine Gael minister for communications, responsible for handling the process, resigned amid political controversy. He remained an Independent TD.
The Tribunal investigated competition to award the mobile phone licence.
In its findings it found it was "beyond doubt" that Mr Lowry imparted substantive information to Mr O’Brien which was "of significant value and assistance to him in securing" the licence for Esat Digifone.
It concluded that over a three-year period Mr Lowry received payments from Mr O’Brien through a series of "clandestine" property deals involving third parties.
It said Mr Lowry received "IR£147,000 from Mr Denis O’Brien in July 1996, stg£300,000 from Mr Denis O’Brien in March 1999 and benefit to the equivalent of a payment in the form of Mr O’Brien’s support of a loan of stg£420,000 in December 1999".
Mr O’Brien and Mr Lowry both rejected the findings.
In 2011, Mr O’Brien told RTÉ News: "They looked at every bank account I had in the world...And they still couldn’t find a payment that I made to Michael Lowry because I never did."
In 2018, Mr Lowry told the RTÉ documentary, Denis O’Brien the Story So Far, that "there was no magic pot of gold. The reason for that is it never existed. It was phantom".
The findings of the Tribunal were investigated by gardaí for 13 years.
In late 2024, a file was sent to the DPP which recently decided not to pursue and criminal proceedings.
In his statement this afternoon, Mr O’Brien said: "The widespread attacks on the result of second mobile phone licence competition have been ongoing in various guises since October 1995; over 30 years."
He added: "However well-intentioned they may have been at one point in history; Tribunals of Inquiry have proven to be a desperately flawed (and I believe desperately unfair) means of investigating matters of this nature in this country.
"Ultimately, Tribunals of Inquiry did not serve the purpose for which they were intended. The fact-finding mission underpinning Tribunals was discarded and what emerged were "opinions"; not facts. Theories; not evidence. I believe that the Moriarty Tribunal’s report was a clear manifestation of these fundamental structural shortcomings."
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Read more: What was the Moriarty Tribunal and what did it find?
