Bruton tells how coalition was pressured by O'Reilly

The former taoiseach, Mr John Bruton, has spoken for the first time in detail about pressure from Sir Anthony O'Reilly and Independent News & Media (IN&M) during the 1994-1997 Rainbow Coalition's period in office.

In a formal statement to the Moriarty tribunal in Dublin Castle, Mr Bruton's former senior adviser, Mr Seán Donlon, has said he left a September 1996 meeting with senior executives of IN&M "in no doubt about Independent Newspapers' hostility to the Government parties if outstanding issues were not resolved to their satisfaction".

Sir Anthony is scheduled to give evidence to the tribunal on March 31st. Mr Donlon, the former Irish ambassador to Washington, is scheduled to give evidence a day earlier.

Yesterday, the tribunal heard from Mr Bruton that the meeting in IN&M's offices in Hatch Street, Dublin, between Mr Donlon and a number of IN&M executives, was arranged following a one-to-one meeting between Mr Bruton, who was then taoiseach, and Sir Anthony at Sir Anthony's house in Glandore, Co Cork, in late July 1996.

Mr Bruton agreed with Mr Rossa Fanning, counsel for the former minister for transport, energy and communications, Mr Michael Lowry, that at the Cork meeting Sir Anthony outlined (to Mr Bruton) a series of "gripes" he had concerning his commercial interests and Mr Bruton's government.

Chief among Sir Anthony's concerns was government inaction over unauthorised TV deflector operators at a time when a company in which IN&M had an interest, Princes Holdings, was losing significant amounts of money on its licensed MMDS TV distribution operation. Sir Anthony was annoyed that the government had not taken action against the unlicensed deflector groups.

Mr Bruton said that after the later meeting in Dublin, Mr Donlon outlined to him the tenor of the exchanges with the newspaper group executives, though he could not recall the detail.

Mr Fanning said Mr Lowry recalled Mr Donlon saying the IN&M executives had said the government would "lose the Independent group as friends if their demands were not met". Mr Bruton said: "That would seem to me to be a very unsubtle threat. I would have thought that the matter - the view would have been conveyed in a slightly more subtle way, but less - but with no less meaning, if you follow what I'm saying."

He said it wouldn't surprise him if "something conveying that meaning was said". The former taoiseach said he thought "the fact that the Irish Independent chose to put an editorial on the front page of its newspaper [on election day\] urging people not to vote for a government which had succeeded in recording a 9 per cent annual growth rate in the economy during its term of office, does indicate a certain perversity of political opinion on the part of that newspaper."