LEO IN FRESH PRESSURE OVER DONALD CALL
LEO Varadkar is facing fresh calls to clarify exactly what happened regarding his apparent intervention over a planning decision near Donald Trump’s Doonbeg golf course in Co. Clare.
The controversy that began in Washington DC is set to follow the Taoiseach home this week as opposition parties remain unsatisfied by his explanation.
Social Democrats co-leader Catherine Murphy said the Taoiseach had failed to get his story straight and expressed serious concerns that his ‘meddling’ left no trace in official planning files.
At a lunch with the US president on Thursday, Mr Varadkar claimed to have rung Clare County Council himself following a phone call from Mr Trump expressing concern over plans to build a wind farm near Doonbeg.
A spokesman for the Taoiseach later clarified it had been an official in Mr Varadkar’s department who had contacted the local authority but Clare County Council had no record of any representation.
Mr Varadkar then produced an email he sent to Fáilte Ireland asking that body to review the planning application to see if they shared Mr Trump’s concerns about the potential impact on local landscapes and tourism. Yesterday it emerged that Fáilte Ireland made a submission objecting to the wind farm following the email from Mr Varadkar, who was then tourism minister.
Kildare North TD Ms Murphy said: ‘This gesture cannot be dismissed as being in any way benign. It is alarming that a minister for tourism would intercede at the behest of a wealthy individual with a State agency which he was directly responsible for at the time.’
She said: ‘Rather than putting the matter to rest, Mr Varadkar’s latest version of events raises more questions that must be answered. Was the minister’s email to the head of Fáilte Ireland decisive in the agency’s decision to subsequently make a submission objecting to the wind farm? Given our history of ... political meddling in planning, how can such a high-level intervention be made without any note of it being recorded in the planning files? Does this mean that ministers can “contract out” their planning interventions to State agencies and leave no trace in the official records?’
Asked in New York at the weekend about the controversy, Mr Varadkar denied he had made a show of himself.
Asked by the Irish Mail on Sunday if he wanted to apologise to the Irish people, the Taoiseach responded: ‘I think I’ve clarified at this stage, I don’t really have anything to add. I’ve clarified, I was telling a humorous anecdote. And I’ve clarified since then and that’s the end of it as far as I’m concerned.’
It comes as a fresh controversy awaits the Taoiseach upon his return to Ireland as RTÉ yesterday revealed he had proposed a PR campaign based around Garda statistics. The ‘good news’ campaign was dropped over serious concerns about the reliability of Garda crime figures.
Fianna Fáil TD Dara Calleary told RTÉ’s This Week he would ask justice spokesman Jim O’Callaghan to raise the issue at the Oireachtas Justice Committee, which is investigating concerns over Garda homicide figures.
The Department of Justice yesterday said the proposed campaign was discussed as a possibility but not proceeded with.