The Moriarty Tribunal sat for over 14 years and has so far cost over €80 million, but what did it actually achieve? In this two-part special, the Scannal team pieces together the events that led to the Tribunal; the evidence, revelations, delays and hourly rates that scandalised the nation and the bombshell findings whose aftershocks are still being felt 14 years on. Presenter Cormac Ó hEadhra meets journalists, lawyers and politicians to reflect on the Tribunal and the events that sparked it and asks, in hindsight, whether the Moriarty Tribunal was worth it – or, as Denis O’Brien claims, a complete waste of taxpayers’ money?
Part One: Tuesday 2 December, 7pm on RTÉ One and RTÉ Player
In November 1996, Sunday Independent journalist Sam Smyth broke the shocking story that an extension to the house of then Fine Gael Minister for Transport, Energy and Communications, Michael Lowry, had been funded by Ben Dunne, scion of the Dunne’s Stores business dynasty.
For years rumours had circulated about a ‘brown envelope’ culture in Irish politics; many a journalist had tried to uncover how Taoiseach Charles J Haughey maintained his extravagant lifestyle on a TD’s salary. But this was the first time a journalist had secured enough evidence to publish a story.
It wasn’t long before the former Taoiseach’s name turned up in the Ben Dunne payments saga too. Ireland was already awash with Tribunals investigating irregularities in planning, medical and state issues, but such was the public, political and media scandal that the Payments to Politicians – or Moriarty Tribunal was set in motion on September 18th 1997.
The Tribunal was also tasked with investigating if the money the two politicians had received had influenced any of the political decisions they had made, including Minister Lowry’s involvement in the controversial awarding of the lucrative second mobile licence in 1995 to Denis O’Brien’s company ESAT Digifone.
Over the next 14 years, the country reeled at the revelations, claims and counter-claims presented at the Tribunal – but also at the eye-watering fees and seemingly interminable legal challenges and delays.
