O’Dea denies blame in election probe over pre-paid envelopes
FIANNA Fáil TD Willie O’Dea says he has mistakenly been reported to the Oireachtas ethics committee after his picture was used without consent on election literature.
The Oireachtas Committee on Members’ Interests has launched an investigation into Mr O’Dea, after a complaint about the Limerick city representative over alleged misuse of official Dáil Éireann prepaid envelopes for election materials.
The envelopes were allegedly used for the dissemination of election leaflets around the local election in May this year.
They featured Mr O’Dea and were in support of local election candidate Trina O’Dea, who is a constituency administrator for Fianna Fáil deputy Niall Collins.
Members of the Oireachtas receive a monthly allocation of pre-paid envelopes, and are only made available in respect of their duties as public representatives, not for election purposes.
Mr O’Dea denied any involvement, saying that the envelopes did not come from his office and had nothing to do with him.
He claimed that he had no connection with Ms O’Dea and none of his allocated Dáil envelopes had been used for electoral purposes.
“My staff never gave out any envelopes, and I had nothing to do with that leaflet,” he said.
“My photograph was on it, but I wasn’t involved, I was never consulted, and I certainly had nothing to do with that leaflet by any manners or means.
“My photograph was on it because the candidate was running in an area that overlaps in my constituency, and she was trying to influence those voters with my picture maybe, but I don’t know.
“I don’t know the person, I met her once at the count, we have absolutely no connection whatsoever.”
Mr Collins and Ms O’Dea were approached for comment.