GOLFGATE SENATOR CALLS FOR ‘SEVERE SANCTIONS’
FIANNA Fáil senator and ‘Golfgate’ attendee Paul Daly has called for ‘severe sanctions’ to be brought down on the RTÉ stars who attended the controversial retirement gathering.
Mr Daly lost his role as Fianna Fáil whip in the Seanad after it emerged he attended the i n f a mous Oireachtas Golf Society dinner in a Co. Galway hotel last August.
The day after the Government introduced new measures to stop the spread of Covid-19, one of which advised against functions in hotels, more t han 80 participants – including high-profile politicians – attended an Oireachtas Golf Society event at the Station House Hotel in Clifden.
Among the political casualties were Fianna Fáil’s Dara Calleary, who lost his role as Minister for Agriculture, and former Fine Gael minister Phil Hogan, who eventually retired from his role as EU Commissioner for Trade, after a drawn-out process.
Séamus Woulfe, Supreme Court judge and then-Attorney General to the Fine Gael/Independent Alliance Government, was also in attendance and will f ace an impeachment motion this week in the Dáil as a result. Now, Senator Daly is calling for similar repercussions for the RTÉ stars who broke the Covid-19 restrictions last week.
High- profile RTÉ presenters Dav i d McCul l a g h , Mi r i a m O’Callaghan and Bryan Dobson were among those present at the ‘impromptu’ retirement celebration in Montrose, and all three have issued apologies.
RTÉ claimed the event to celebrate staff member Phil Collins’s 35 years of service was not organised in advance.
However, the chair of the Oi r e a c h t a s ’ s Media Committee, Cavan-Monaghan Fianna Fáil TD Niamh Smyth, disputes these claims and i ntends to grill RTÉ’s director general Dee Forbes at tomorrow’s committee meeting.
Mr Daly insists that some of those present said his apology for attending the golf dinner was ‘insufficient’ and that it was now their turn to be sanctioned because their breach of the restrictions was ‘far greater’ than his. His email to Minister for Communications Eamon Ryan and RTÉ’s Ms Forbes reads, in part: ‘I sincerely and genuinely apologised at the time [for attending the Golfgate dinner]; this apology was not deemed sufficient by numerous RTÉ correspondents, reporters and presenters, I lost the FF party whip and my position as FF whip and Government assistant whip in Seanad Éireann as a consequence of my regrettable mistake at the time.’ He added: ‘Not to mention the personal grief and serious mental stress experienced by myself, my family and close acquaintances as a consequence of been vilified on the national airwaves for a prolonged period and indeed on many occasions by the self-same RTÉ employees now in breach of Covid restrictions by attending a retirement party for a colleague.’