Propping Up FF FG - Another Dirty Lowry Crime!

We told you before the election - vote Independent, get Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael. Now Indepedent TD for Tipperary, Michael Lowry, is leading negotiations with the establishment parties to form a new government.

Lowry was a former chair of Fine Gael who has been mired in corruption scandal after corruption scandal his whole political career.

“In a so-called ‘democratic’ republic”, The German socialist thinker Friedrich Engels wrote “wealth exercises its power indirectly, but all the more surely, first, by means of the direct corruption of officials and secondly, by means of an alliance of the government and the Stock Exchange."

Lowry, is a clear example of the “direct corruption of officials.” Two months after the Irish state handed over the mobile phone licence worth billions to Esat Digifone owned by businessman Denis O’Brien, he made payments to Fine Gael Communications Minister, Michael Lowry.

The billionaire and the politician used offshore accounts and the purchase of a house to try to disguise the transaction between them. One of the witnesses to the Moriarty Tribunal was O’Brien’s accountant and financial adviser Aidan Phelan.

Phelan told the tribunal that in July 1996 he opened an account in his own name with AIB’s Isle of Man subsidiary, to receive money belonging to O’Brien. He never told the bank that the money was O’Brien’s.

£407,000 was transferred from an account with Woodchester Bank in Dublin (which belonged to Denis O’Brien’s Communicorp) to the Isle of Man AIB account. As the new account wasn’t ready, Phelan stuck the cash in another account belonging to Diest Trading (Pakistan Ltd) through which Phelan imported clothes into Europe.

A week later the cash went into the AIB account which immediately made payments to the then Fine Gael Minister of Communications Michael Lowry.

When the Paradise papers leaked, revealing the worldwide tax avoidance of the global rich, O’Brien and Lowry’s names turned up. A document from the Appleby law firm mentioned payments to Lowry.

On the 21st of October, 1996, £147,000 was transferred from businessman David Austin’s account in Jersey to an account with Irish Nationwide in the Isle of Man, in Lowry’s name.

Previously, money had been transferred from the Isle of Man account to Austin’s Jersey account. A cheque for £50,000 was written from the Isle of Man account and given to the businessman, obviously acting as an intermediary in these dodgy dealings.

When Lowry set up the Irish Nationwide account in the Isle of Man he told them he didn’t want any correspondence in the mail, he also told them he was a ‘company director’, better than the more correct ‘corrupt politician’. Lowry later told the Tribunal that he’d ‘borrowed’ the money.

In the end the Moriarty Tribunal reckoned O’Brien had given Lowry £420,000 in various ways. The Esat Digifone license was the most valuable license the Irish state had ever issued. It became the basis of Denis O’Brien’s billions.

The neo-liberal privatisation process, handing over state assets to private companies at knockdown prices, is disgraceful enough in itself, but this deal was even more disgraceful because the private capitalist in question had just paid off the politicians to give him what he wanted.

Denis O’Brien made €200 million when Esat Digifone was sold off. Forbes magazine said of O’Brien:

“Despite coups, corruption, and kidnappings, Denis O’Brien keeps pouring money into the world’s poorest, most violent countries. His bet: Give phones to the masses and they will fight your enemies for you.” The Irish taxpayer was cheated and state assets “stolen” to give O’Brien his start; a base upon which he built a global empire.

O’Brien wasn’t the only rich man to grease Michael Lowry’s palm. Lowry was accused of “breathtaking corruption” when he asked a party insider who was also a partner in a leading estate agent to influence a dodgy deal on Marlborough House in Dublin.

Coke fiend and retail millionaire Ben Dunne bought the building in 1995 for £5.4 million. Lowry was trying to double the rent on the building tried to have the buildings valued at £12.5 million. Subsequent tribunals found numerous payments from Ben Dunne to Lowry.

The building was being rented by the state-owned Telecom Éireann, meaning Lowry was trying to help Ben Dunne scam the taxpayer out of the rent as well as fleecing any future buyer of the building.

In 1992 Dunne had been found guilty of possession of cocaine and ‘soliciting’ while in Florida, losing him his Dunnes Stores job, but, of course, if you’re rich you don’t get sent to jail. He did a stint in a rehab clinic instead.

In 2007 Lowry had to admit to tax evasion.

His company Garuda had to pay back €1.2 million to revenue. Not content with being a capitalist company owner, corrupt politician and tax evader, Lowry also hid land ownership from the Dáil register of interests. The politicians are supposed to let us know when they are landlords or own a business.

That way the public can see if there’s any conflict of interest, not that it stops them from being landlords or capitalists.

Another of Lowry’s companies ‘Vineacre Limited” owned a 25-acre site in Wigan in Britain. In 2013, a number of tapes leaked to the public revealed he was trying to hide another €250,000.

“I’m asking you, Kevin, for fuck’s sake will you protect me just a small bit. For jaysus sake don’t land me in it. I’m destroyed as it fucking is. … I can’t bring out that 200 – that 250 – again. If that comes out again I’m fucking ruined, I’m bankrupt. … They can’t find that 200. I never declared it. Now, the 2500 – the 250 – that I gave you, I paid that directly. I never put that through my books or my account of anything, nobody’s going to fucking get it, so I’ve got, you, know, I mean, I’m not even bringing that into it.”

In any other capitalist country this would be grounds for calling in the cops. But Lowry just left the Fine Gael party and still sits in the Dáil as an Independent TD, courted by the main parties now they need to form a new government.

Former Taoiseach, Enda Kenny, refused to reopen the Moriarty Tribunal, never mind calling in the Criminal Assets Bureau. Lowry’s connection to his former party leader came in useful when he passed Kenny a note asking him to appoint Lowry’s press advisor, Valerie O’Reilly, to the board of the National Transport Authority.

The note read: “Taoiseach, would you please consider reappointing Valerie O’Reilly to the board of the NTA. A woman, bright, intelligent and not bad looking either!”

O’Reilly owned her own PR firm and lots of our politicians like to surround themselves with PR gurus to better sell themselves to the public. Having people like her run the NTA as a quango is one of the reasons Ireland has such poor public transport.

The Moriarty Tribunal report revealed that Michael Lowry had personally pocketed £34,500 which Ben Dunne had given as a Christmas bonus from Dunnes Stores for staff of Lowry’s refrigeration company, Streamline, based in Thurles. So much for representing the people of Thurles.

In May 2019, 5 members of Lowry’s “Team Lowry” were elected to Tipperary County Council and the team included his son Micheál. Lowry himself topped the poll in the 2020 general election with 14,802 votes. His vote fell marginally in the 2024 election with Lowry getting 12,538 votes.

Irish establishment politicians are experts at detaching themselves from association with the political elite “up in Dublin” and playing on local concerns. In Tipperary North, Michael Lowry plays the role of a victim – claiming he’s “persecuted” by the liberal “Dublin media”.

Lowry claims there is an “organised, concerted and vicious media campaign” waged against him. Lowry takes credit for everything he can in the local area, from Thurles Park to a new Lidl going in.

But these right-wing chancers also rest on classes, on a social base. When he was in Fine Gael he built up a network of connections to local business people. He acts as their voice.

He was also opposed to the repeal of the 8th amendment, pitching himself to a conservative, Catholic voter base. He was one of 32 TDs who voted to deny the Irish people a right to vote on the issue. It wasn’t even a vote on abortion, it was a vote about whether to let the people vote, and he opposed it.

As the great socialist James Connolly wrote: “Yes, friends, governments in capitalist society are but committees of the rich to manage the affairs of the capitalist class.”

Crooks rule in the highest offices in the land and those you elect to replace them will be bought and sold by the rich as long as capitalism exists. Billionaires are far too powerful and only a people power rebellion that finally puts our class, the working class, in the driving seat, with democratic control over the wealth we create, can end that corruption.

When Michael Martin said he couldn’t talk to Sinn Féin because the values of his party and the values of the Shinners didn’t align - you got to ask, do Fianna Fáil’s values align with the corrupt Lowry? We all know the answer to that.