Michael Lowry (born 13 March 1953) is an Irish independent politician who has served as a Teachta Dála (TD) since 1987, currently for the Tipperary North constituency.

More recently his relationship with Kevin Phelan has come under scrutiny, with the emergence of a recorded conversation in which Lowry claims to have made an undeclared payment of €250,000.

These included allegations of irregularities relating to the granting of a mobile phone licence to Esat Telecom, which were later investigated by the Moriarty Tribunal, plans for the Dublin Light Rail System and the closure of rural post offices.

The 1997 McCracken Tribunal revealed supermarket tycoon Ben Dunne had paid IR£395,000 for an extension to Lowry's home in Tipperary.

Taoiseach John Bruton announced that Lowry would not be allowed to stand as a Fine Gael candidate at the next election, and he resigned from the party.

[13] This was strongly opposed by all opposition parties and led to a stand off in the Dáil on its first sitting of 2025 which delayed the election of Micheál Martin as Taoiseach.

In early 2007 Lowry announced that he had made a full and final settlement of all outstanding payments with the Revenue Commissioners in response to the findings concerning his tax evasion.

[2] It concluded "beyond doubt" that Lowry gave what it termed "substantive information to Denis O'Brien, of significant value and assistance to him in securing the licence".

[23] The tribunal also found that Lowry sought to procure unwarranted rent increases that over a seven-year period would have benefited businessman Ben Dunne.

Lowry sought to influence the outcome of an arbitration being conducted in 1995 in relation to the rent payable by the then state-owned Telecom Éireann for Marlborough House to a company owned and controlled by Dunne.

[24] On 31 March 2011, following the Moriarty Report's publication, the Dáil passed an all-party motion calling on Lowry to voluntarily resign his seat.

[27] Smyth defended the defamation claim, stating he "did not call Michael Lowry TD a thief, but did believe he was a liar and a tax cheat".

An unprecedented 380 complaints were made by members of the public in relation to the scandal, partly prompted by an article written by author Elaine Byrne.

[35] As of December 2012, the probe into Lowry's failure to declare the land interest had been transferred to the Standards in Public Office Commission (SIPO).

[36] In March 2013, Northern Ireland land scout Kevin Phelan revealed that Lowry had made payments to him in 2002, of which only half had been disclosed to the Moriarty Tribunal.

The Sunday Independent released a secret recording of a telephone conversation made by Phelan, in which Lowry asks for nothing to be revealed about the payment to the tribunal.

Lowry passed a note to the Taoiseach in the Dáil chamber asking him to consider re-appointing Valerie O'Reilly, who runs her own successful public relations agency, to the board of the National Transport Authority (NTA).

The incident came just three months after Kenny and Fine Gael were engulfed in another cronyism scandal involving John McNulty and the Irish Museum of Modern Art.

[44] The then Fianna Fáil senator Averil Power expressed surprise at the tone of the note, and said: "She probably does have strong business credentials, but to be referred to in this Father Ted 'lovely girls' sort of way is every women's worst nightmare.

"I had been following a debate on a health-related issue in the Seanad and, out of courtesy, I informed Mr Donohoe, when I met him, that I had sent a note to the Taoiseach on the reappointment", claimed Lowry.