Have you heard the one about Michael the Irishman, Denis the Irishman and Ben the Irishman? Ireland spent 15 years and more than €83 million to expose them as suspect beneficiaries of the State only for its ruling class to lionise them. This is not a joke.
Less than five years after the State awarded Denis the Irishman’s consortium a mobile phone licence when he was a tender 37 years old, he sold the phone company for €2.4 billion, netting €317m for himself. By moving his tax residency to Portugal, he avoided a capital gains bill estimated at €57 million. He went on to become a billionaire.
Sixteen years after landing the licence, Denis the Irishman O’Brien was found by a State inquiry to have made personal payments and loan facilities worth over €1 million to Michael the Irishman Lowry, the minister for communications, in 1995. The Moriarty Tribunal said the minister had “secured the winning of the licence” for Denis the Irishman and “it was beyond doubt” he had imparted information to the businessman “of significant value and assistance in securing the licence”.
The final report of the tribunal – costing €83 million to date - said it had encountered “persistent and active concealment” by the businessman, the minister and five other named individuals that was “calculated to obscure [evidence of] monetary connections between Mr Michael Lowry and Mr Denis O’Brien”. It stated the inquiry’s “extended length [was] due predominantly to the activities of Mr O’Brien, Mr Lowry and their associates in concealing information from the tribunal”.
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Notably, Denis the Irishman, a prolific libel litigant, has denied Moriarty’s findings but has not challenged them through the courts. Nor has Michael the Irishman.
Following a Garda investigation into Moriarty’s assertions that his inquiries were hindered, the Director of Public Prosecutions issued a notification in August 2017 that there would be no prosecution.
Worse was to follow when the Moriarty tribunal discovered Michael the Irishman had tried to double the rent payable by Telecom Éireann for a building Ben the Irishman owned
It was revealed last week that the State Claims Agency has paid €5.8m to Denis the Irishman for legal costs he incurred at the tribunal, where he gave evidence for nine days. This is not a joke.
It brings us to Michael the Irishman, who might have been mistaken for a patriot when he went to work ostensibly for his country as a government minister. Until, that is, he had to resign after journalist Sam Smyth reported that Ben the Irishman had arranged for his company to spend £395,000 (€501,000) on the refurbishment of the politician’s house.
Worse was to follow when the Moriarty tribunal discovered Michael the Irishman had tried to double the rent payable by Telecom Éireann for a building Ben the Irishman owned. The judge said the attempt by the minister – the sole shareholder in the State-owned tenant company – was “profoundly corrupt to a degree that was nothing short of breath-taking”.
Still, the sleaze kept flowing. Michael the Irishman – who twice issued libel proceedings personally against Smyth, in vain – settled a €1.4m tax bill with Revenue in 2007. In 2016, he and his company were convicted in the Dublin Circuit Court for making incorrect tax returns and not keeping proper records. After Moriarty’s report described his role in the mobile phone process as “disgraceful and insidious”, the Dáil passed a unanimous motion calling on him to resign his parliamentary seat. He didn’t.
Last year, the Tipperary TD announced he had settled a dispute with the tribunal over his legal costs, which he put at €2,869,338. Now he is Mr Fixit for a Government led by Micheál Martin – who previously accused the cabinet Lowry belonged to of being “either fools or knaves” for allowing what Moriarty called his “cynical and venal abuse of office” – and Simon Harris, whose Fine Gael parted ways with Lowry when the worms started crawling out of the can 30 years ago. Lowry has positioned his chosen candidate in the Ceann Comhairle’s seat and four of his Dáil associates in junior and super junior ministries. This is not a joke.
Next to take a bow is Ben the Irishman Dunne, whose generosity to certain politicians knew no bounds. As well as padding Lowry’s pockets and “knowingly” – according to another High Court judge, Brian McCracken - helping him evade tax, the chain store boss stuffed about €2 million into Charles Haughey’s silkier pockets.
The Dunnes Stores family trust was facing a tax bill of £38.8 million in 1987 when, within a month of becoming taoiseach, Haughey arranged for Ben the Irishman to meet the head of the Revenue Commissioners to discuss the issue. A month later, Dunne wrote a cheque for £282,500 sterling in Haughey’s favour. Moriarty concluded that Haughey’s intervention with Revenue “did confer a benefit on Mr Dunne”.
The businessman rejected Moriarty’s finding that Lowry’s failed attempt to raise Telecom Éireann’s rent payable to Dunne was “profoundly corrupt”. He went on Liveline when the tribunal report came out and said: “Mr Moriarty, if you believe what you have put in print about Ben Dunne, make sure now that Ben Dunne is prosecuted and put behind bars because corrupt people should be put into jail.”
Persona Digital Telephony, a losing bidder for the mobile phone licence 30 years ago, is suing the State
When Dunne died in 2023, the then taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, sent his aide de camp to represent him at the funeral. RTÉ broadcast a profile of him last September entitled Extraordinary Life: The Ben Dunne Story. This is not a joke.
Nor is any of this ancient history. Persona Digital Telephony, a losing bidder for the mobile phone licence 30 years ago, is suing the State and, three months ago, won a discovery order in the High Court for access to tribunal records.
It was reported that Michael the Irishman was interviewed by gardaí last summer. A Garda file on protracted investigations into Moriarty’s findings is awaiting a decision in the DPP’s office.
The judge and his tribunal team at Dublin Castle, investigative journalist Smyth, gardaí who inquired into the alleged obstruction of the tribunal and truthful witnesses have all been hung out to dry by political rulers.
Currently, politicians are in a state of high dudgeon, and rightly so, over the Farrelly commission’s flawed report on the case of Grace. There is even talk of an inquiry into the inquiry. But the sincerity of the babble must be questioned when politicians treat State inquiry findings like Dolly mixtures. The sweeter ones are for chewing. The ones not to their taste are for the bin.
