COVENEY STILL UNDER THREAT AS WOES MOUNT
Cabinet backing at low point despite diplomatic victories
FOREIGN Minister Simon Coveney’s Cabinet colleagues’ exasperation is growing following another week of political gaffes from the former safe pair of hands.
Mr Coveney’s supporters were last night highlighting the return of businessman Richard O’Halloran from China as well as Russia’s retreat from military manoeuvres within Ireland’s Exclusive Economic Zone – but even these achievements led to criticism
in some quarters. His critics – notwithstanding what many accepted was a good day for him on Saturday – were focused on:
■ The continuing fallout over his criticism of the Army Chief of Staff’s decision to meet and be photographed with the Russian ambassador last week.
■ The walkout of the Women of Honour group from a meeting after he refused a statutory inquiry into allegations of rape and sexual assault in the Defence Forces.
■ A cool response to terms of reference for the inquiry to the Champagne-gate affair at the Department of Foreign Affairs – which rumbles on and on.
The mood among both Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil ministers in recent days was leading to speculation in political circles that Mr Coveney could be removed from his post.
There is particular anger in Fine Gael over how the minister has plunged the Department of Defence into its biggest crisis since the Donegan affair in 1976, where the then-Fine Gael minister, Paddy Donegan, called the then-president Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh ‘a thundering disgrace’ and the president resigned over the insult.
Politicians with army experience are concerned that Mr Coveney appears to have ‘blundered’ into a row with the Army Chief of Staff during the current Russian crisis.
There is grave concern across Government that Mr Coveney’s decision to discuss a meeting held between the Chief of Staff Seán Clancy and the ambassador at a Fine Gael parliamentary party meeting on Wednesday has ‘fatally undermined’ the country’s senior army officer.
Mr Coveney moved to shore up the Army Chief’s position in the Dáil on Thursday morning:
‘He’ll find it more difficult to get people to defend him’
‘I have absolutely no reservations or questions about his actions and I just want to put that on the record, because I don’t think it’s welcome that the chief of staff has been brought into public commentary and political debate and I recognise that I’ve made a contribution to allowing that to happen. And I would certainly like to correct that this morning.’
He also said: ‘I have, as you would expect, been fully briefed by the chief of staff, I spoke to him again last night.’
Asked if Mr Coveney or his department had been told about the meeting ahead of time, Mr Coveney’s spokesman told the Irish Mail on Sunday: ‘The minister comprehensively dealt with the subjects you raise during Dáil questions on Thursday morning. I have nothing else to add.’
Despite this, Fianna Fáil ministers and TDs have now joined their Fine Gael colleagues in believing the ‘disaster-prone’ Mr Coveney is damaging the credibility of the coalition government.
The MoS previously reported that Fine Gael ministers believe that Mr Coveney needs to be removed from the Department of Foreign Affairs after a series of controversies.
A Cabinet minister told the MoS last night: ‘He’s in, in the words of Barack Obama, “s***storm territory”.
‘Every little thing is amplified and he keeps helping the stories on. He’s going to find it more and more difficult to get people to defend him publicly.’
Crucially, these comments were made before the double highlight of Mr O’Halloran’s safe return and the Russian navy’s about-turn.
Mr Coveney’s colleagues say that he will take some credit for the foreign affairs successes of the last week but that they will do little to stave off the deeper threats to his position.
‘Ultimately, I still think Coveney is in deep trouble, as at the end of the day it suits Leo Varadkar for him to be in trouble. The deputy leader in continuing travails distracts from the leader’s troubles. Completion of tasks like negotiations with foreign powers over naval exercises and detained Irish citizens that your department is supposed to be doing anyway, will not save Coveney in the long run.’
‘Unfortunately, victories like this will have many fathers, yet Coveney will find himself alone defending the other things,’ said a Cabinet source.
‘The culmination of a three-year negotiation to return a man illegally held is just that, the culmination. It was a very complicated negotiation,’ said the source, ‘but many will claim the success.’
‘The resiling of the Russian fleet further into the Atlantic Ocean and the return of this poor man could be characterised as a fight back, for sure, but their very characterisation as a fight back shows that a fight back is necessary in the first place. They will not repair the deeper damage that has been done to Simon Coveney.
‘That will not occur until there is accountability for what happened in his Department offices on June 17, 2020. That accountability must either be forced on the civil servants who committed the Covid restriction breaches or it will be forced on Coveney.’
In what is viewed as significant sign, after the Women of Honour group left a meeting with Mr Coveney last Monday, Taoiseach Micheál Martin offered in the Dáil to meet the women. They accepted his offer and the meeting will take place tomorrow morning, further undermining the Defence Minister.
The women are set to ask Mr Martin for a statutory enquiry, after they rejected Mr Coveney’s offer last week of a judge-led independent review.
Similarly, a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee has criticised the terms of reference for an inquiry into ‘champagne party’ held by senior civil servants at the Department of Foreign Affairs in June 2020.
Social Democrats TD, Gary Gannon, said that the terms of reference are ‘too narrow’
‘For starters, they are limited to the events of one day, June 17, 2020 when the champagne party was held,’ said Mr Gannon. ‘But that would to me exclude a vital email, sent on June 16, that was released during the week showing that the secretary general [of Foreign Affairs] had alerted the staff to attend the Department the following day.’ Mr Coveney has already admitted that he became aware of Covid-19 regulation breaches in his Department on the night they occurred but did nothing about it.
‘Also the terms of reference also appear to me to investigate the people we already know were there,’ said Mr Gannon. ‘It will not look at who went in and out of the room during that day, and that could have been a lot of people. There is a simple way to see who was in the Department that day, as they would have had to sign in.’
A Fianna Fáil minister told the MoS that they believe that it is ‘time to put Minister Coveney out to pasture.’
‘He’s been there an awful long time now, 11 years in Cabinet,’ said a minister, ‘and if he hasn’t learned to avoid this kind of stuff at this stage, he never will.’
Mr Coveney, previously seen as a steady hand during the Brexit crisis, has run into controversy after controversy since last summer.
He proposed his former Cabinet colleague Katherine Zappone to a prestigious UN envoy role without clearing it with his Fianna Fáil Cabinet colleagues beforehand.
Concern is also growing over the minister’s disastrous meeting with
the Women of Honour group. One furious Fianna Fáil minister said: ‘The Dáil was united on the utter necessity to treat women with respect. Women who were prepared to take a bullet for their country walked out of a meeting because of Coveney’s arrogance.’
Jubilant fishermen last night insisted that Mr Coveney played no part in convincing the Russian defence minister to divert theforces away from their fishing grounds. Senior diplomatic sources claimed that a forthcoming appearance by the Russian ambassador at the Foreign Affairs Committee and plans by a group of parliamentarians to observe the naval exercise at sea were equally influential.
‘He’s been there an awful long time’