POLITICAL PRESSURE on Tipperary North TD Michael Lowry has eased slightly as the main parties declined to censure him over Moriarty tribunal findings.
Fine Gael and Labour sources said yesterday a motion of censure would serve no point as there was no way to force Mr Lowry to resign his Dáil seat if he didn’t want to.
Despite Taoiseach Enda Kenny saying the former minister for communications should resign, none of his Ministers were prepared to echo this. Calls to several Fine Gael Ministers who have not commented on the issue were not returned.
Mr Kenny said the Moriarty report clearly exonerated members of the current Government who were in the cabinet during the 1994-97 period.
The report found that Mr Lowry “secured the winning” of the 1995 mobile phone licence competition for Denis O’Brien’s Esat Digifone when he was minister for communications.
From Brussels Mr Kenny said he would be speaking in the Dáil debate on the report next week and would have something to say about that issue.
On the question of whether Mr Lowry should resign his seat the Taoiseach said that in an ideal world a deputy in this situation should resign. Mr Kenny added that he had asked Government Chief Whip Paul Kehoe to provide an opportunity for the report to be discussed and debated in the Dáil.
“Deputy Lowry, who is centrally involved in this Moriarty report where there are serious allegations, should go into the House and answer them,” he said.
Fine Gael Minister of State for Public Service Reform Brian Hayes said that while Mr Lowry should resign there was nothing TDs could do to make him do so.
“If it was left to me, he would go. However, there’s a difference between wanting him to go and him actually going,” Mr Hayes said. A vote calling on Mr Lowry to resign would be a “futile exercise” if it didn’t achieve a result.
He acknowledged that the tribunal report’s findings on political fundraising in the mid-1990s did not cast Fine Gael in a good light. But he added: “This form of fundraising is gone and will soon be gone forever when we ban corporate fundraising.”
Labour said next week’s debate would provide TDs with an opportunity to state their views on the report and on Mr Lowry’s conduct. A spokesman said party leader Eamon Gilmore expressed the view of the party when he called on Mr Lowry to resign.
“However, there’s no way of forcing him to resign,” the spokesman added. It was wrong to say that nothing was being done about the Independent TD as the report in which he is so trenchantly criticised has been referred to the Garda, the spokesman said.
Fianna Fáil plans to review its options but a spokesman said the party was “keen not to buy into the notion that this is all about one person”. Accountability needed to be shared by all those involved in the awarding of the mobile phone licence, he said.
In 2002, the late Liam Lawlor was the subject of a motion, supported by all parties, criticising his failure to co-operate with the planning tribunal. But Mr Lawlor, who was released from jail for the debate, ignored calls to resign.
Mr Kenny is scheduled to make the opening statement on the report in the Dáil next Tuesday evening.
Statements will continue for two hours with a further five hours devoted to the subject the following day, including an hour-long question-and-answer session due to be taken by Minister for Communications Pat Rabbitte.