MR LOWRY was "perfectly happy" when Ben Dunne agreed with his suggestion that he assist him in buying his Pounds 140,000 home and with its refurbishment, the former minister told the tribunal.
The supermarket boss owed him substantial amounts of money for the enormous savings Mr Lowry had made the company and the former minister made "no secret" that Dunnes Stores had helped pay for his Tipperary home.
Mr Dunne contributed to Mr Lowry's house purchase and with its refurbishment after Mr Lowry telephoned him and said he was buying a house, he said.
Money transferred from the Isle of Man to Mr Lowry's building society account in Cork was not, however, used to purchase what he described as "a modest house of good standard". A mortgage was taken out on Holycross and was paid for with payments totalling Pounds 90,000 given by Mr Dunne for this purpose.
Referring to the political storm which followed revelations about his house e extension, Mr Lowry said his family home had now become "a tourist attraction" and, despite reports to the contrary, it was simply "a modest house of good standard".
The property came on to the market in March 1992. Mr Lowry was already living in the area and he decided to put in an offer for the house, which was to be sold at public auction.
He rang Mr Dunne and told him of his desire to buy the house, doing so in the full knowledge that Dunnes Stores owed him a substantial sum of money.
Mr Denis McCullough SC, for the tribunal, stressed it was at this time that Mr Lowry had grown anxious about the nature of the business arrangement he had with Dunnes Stores and had sought to formalise it.
He suggested this anxiety would surely have been "heightened" by Mr Lowry's decision to buy a house and asked Mr Lowry what attempts he made to regularise these arrangements.
Mr Lowry said: "It was very simple. I rang Mr Dunne, I told him I had intended to purchase this house, and I did that in the full knowledge that a substantial amount of money was owed to me by Dunnes Stores.
"Effectively what I was asking was some of that money owed to me would be forwarded, to me for that particular purpose.
Mr McCullough asked if this was how Mr Lowry intended to regularise his affairs, that he would be paid what he was owed and would use it to pay for his house.
Mr Lowry said it was for Dunnes Stores and not for him to calculate what money was owed to him. In his own view, the money owing far exceeded the cost of the house.
Irwin, the company's former chief accountant, had estimated these savings at about Pounds 1.3 million. However, Mr Lowry did not have a precise figure, merely an expectation of what he was owed.
Mr McCullough said he found it difficult to accept that Mr Lowry had no idea of how much money was owing to him. He then demanded to know how Mr Lowry managed to persuade Mr Dunne to pay for his house.
Mr Lowry told him: "There are conversations that would stick in your mind and that conversation, you may find incredible, didn't last long.
"I rang Mr Dunne. I informed him of what I had hoped my plans would be and his response was "You've done a brilliant job, the group and I are very happy with the performance, we have made huge savings, go ahead and buy the house, and we will assist you and support you in doing that and in refurbishing the house" and he told me he would look after, the refurbishment of the house.
"It was he who said to me that he would do it through the company and we would later "sort it out" was the phrase that was used.
Questioned about the payments made by Mr Dunne, Mr Lowry said that two separate payments of Pounds 50,000 and Pounds 40,000 were paid on Mr Dunne's instructions following their phone call.
Mr McCullough asked whether it was Mr Lowry's intention to use money transferred from the Isle of Man to Mr Lowry's Irish Permanent account in Cork city to help him buy the house at Holycross.
A sum of Pounds 25,000 which had been paid into a Bank of Ireland account in the Isle of Man in October 1990 was not paid by Dunnes Stores with the intention of assisting with his house, Mr Lowry said.
Neither was a payment of Pounds 40,000 sterling paid into the Badgworth account in the Isle of Man in August 1991 intended to help with the house purchase. The property at Holycross came onto the market at short notice, said Mr Lowry.
However, the Pounds 50,000 and Pounds 40,000 payments from Mr Dunne made in March 1992 were used for this purpose.
However, Mr Lowry stressed he did not know how much of what he was owed these contributions represented.
Mr McCullough suggested it would have been more logical for Mr Lowry to have used the money he had available in the account in Cork to buy the house and not take out a mortgage.
Mr Lowry said it was up to him as to how he paid for the house and his decision was to take a mortgage.
Mr McCullough: "Was any part of that decision based on the intention, or the hope, that you would conceal the fact that you had these monies?"
Mr Lowry replied firmly: "Absolutely not. The money was sitting in the Irish Permanent in Cork in the name of Michael Lowry, and I had no reason other than that I had something else I wanted to do."
Over this period the turnover of Streamline Enterprises was Pounds 25 million, but Mr Lowry and his company received only Pounds 718,000, including the Pounds 395,000 paid by Dunnes for his house extension.
Mr McCullough suggested this was the whole reason why Mr Lowry was getting the business from Dunnes, that he did not charge commission. But Mr Dunne's method of paying him in turn gave him certain advantages.
Mr Lowry said such methods were not unusual in Dunnes Stores and Mr Dunne had always intended to finalise these arrangements. Some of Mr Dunne's money was intended as an incentive for him to do better the following year.
Mr McCullough suggested the arrangement he reached with Mr Dunne over the purchase of his house did not help Mr Lowry formalise their business arrangements.
"Here you are dealing with Mr Dunne discussing those very matters with him and you enter into an arrangement then which couldn't be more complicated and more calculated to make a total mess of your financial arrangements, isn't that right?" inquired Mr McCullough.
Mr Lowry said he didn't see it like that. "Is there anybody in this room, that if somebody came into you and said "I owe you money and I'll pay you by way of constructing your house." I'm not aware of very many people who would have said No go away, I won't take payment in that manner".
Questioned further on the matter, he added: "There was nothing unusual about it, it was not an exceptional item. I would have to say that from my knowledge of industry and my knowledge of business, this happens frequently in industry and in business, in terms of senior employees in a company getting this type of incentive by way of having refurbishment to their houses. I saw it as that and nothing more."
When Mr McCullough referred to the standards Mr Lowry had spoken of for the semi-state sector during his term as minister, he said: "I would like to say to you that I did not see this as a cosy cartel, 1 did not see this as a sweet-heart deal."
Of his relationship with Mr Dunne, Mr Lowry said he was seen as a senior figure in the company and there were times when he was treated as such. He saw the purchase of his house as a way of giving the momentum to his attempts to formalise their business arrangements.
Mr McCullough, however, suggested Mr Lowry's only real problem was, that he was "not getting enough
Mr Lowry said all he wanted was to get a fair recompense and that he was never overpaid.
"I did not force Mr Dunne or Dunnes Stores to do anything. I simply made a request and informed him of what my plans were and he quite generously, and he was quite entitled to, took the reaction that he did on the basis of what I had already achieved."
Mr Lowry prompted loud laughter when he described how media reports about his home at Holycross had turned it into "a tourist attraction".
Despite claims to the contrary, the property was "a modest house of good standard", he said. The price of the house was Pounds 140,000.