The Northern Irish businessman was a key figure in the Moriarty tribunal’s lengthy investigation into financial links between Michael Lowry and billionaire businessman Denis O’Brien.
Lowry, the Tipperary North Independent TD and a central player in the Coalition Government formed after last November’s general election, used Phelan’s services in the late 1990s when purchasing property in Cheadle and Mansfield. The tribunal was told O’Brien had nothing to do with these deals.
About the same time Phelan was involved in a larger deal to purchase Doncaster Rovers Football Club to develop its stadium after moving the team elsewhere. That deal, the tribunal was told, was O’Brien’s and had nothing to do with Lowry.
The tribunal’s work was hampered by what it said were attempts to cover up links between Lowry and O’Brien in respect of the land deals. In relation to the Doncaster deal, the tribunal decided Lowry had been involved at some stage but was not able to say precisely how given the “deliberate falsehoods” it encountered.
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During the inquiry, substantial payments were made by O’Brien and Lowry to Phelan. A £65,000 sterling payment to Phelan in 2002, by Lowry, was said by the politician to be fees due to Phelan. The same year an O’Brien company paid Phelan STG£150,000; the tribunal was told it was for fees linked to Doncaster.
Published in 2011, the tribunal’s report said O’Brien provided financial backing for the Mansfield and Cheadle deals and that the support was linked to Lowry’s role as minister for communications in 1995-1996 when O’Brien’s consortium won the State’s first mobile phone licence competition.
Lowry and O’Brien strongly rejected the findings.
There was a fascinating coda in 2013 to Phelan’s involvement in the land deals surfaced again in 2013 when the Sunday Independent published “the Lowry Tapes”, a secret recording made by Phelan of a telephone 2004 call with Lowry, which Phelan gave to journalist Elaine Byrne.
The tapes revealed that Lowry had made a second payment to Phelan. His refrigeration company had diverted an August 2022 payment of £248,624 sterling it received to Phelan. The payment was not recorded at the time by Lowry’s company, although Lowry and his company had made a tax settlement in 2006.
Lowry can be heard on the recording pleading with Phelan not to assert, as Phelan apparently was threatening to, that the payment was linked to the Doncaster deal.
“I’m f**king begging you,” Lowry said. “They [the tribunal] can’t find that [payment]. I never declared it.”
Following publication, the Revenue raided Lowry’s home. He and his company were later found guilty of tax offences in the Dublin Circuit Criminal Court.
O’Brien is still the owner of Doncaster Rovers, though the company behind the team no longer has a lease on its old grounds, which have been redeveloped.
In 2013, it was reported that Phelan was representing a consortium interested in buying the soccer club.
In 2014 Lowry sought unsuccessfully to prevent his trial for tax offences going ahead. During the hearing, his counsel said Pavilion Capital – a London firm that Phelan was acting for in the 2013 deal – was an “overlord” that controlled the information being published by the Sunday Independent, meaning the Lowry tapes.
Neither the company nor the newspaper group were in court to respond.
