Thread by @gavreilly

NEW: As early as March 4th, Katherine Zappone was texting him to thank you "so, so much" for some new role - and wanting to know how long the appointment would be for.

This is months before the spec for any position was drafted by Dept, and four months before Taoiseach knew

The documents published by Dept of Foreign Affairs this afternoon also show a senior official in the Dept raising concern about whether it had enough staff to support the work of such an envoy, in particular because it was so busy with the UN Security Council presidency

It also shows Zappone contacting Ireland's UN ambassador in early June asking about her appointment, inferring some frustration about how slowly it was moving

In one email in June, an official in DFA's legal division reports a claim that Zappone has been "doing some work with the DFA on LGBTI issues" - and is told that, other than giving a speech at an embassy event in Washington, there hadn't been any such involvement

There's also a WhatsApp from Zappone to Coveney in February of this year, where KZ looks for Coveney's help getting introduced to Samantha Power, the Dublin-born US Secretary for International Development. She has already been onto Paschal Donohoe seeking help with this.

While there are records of some brief meetings in DFA in March about the idea of creating an envoy for LGBT issues, the UN office didn't start pulling together a brief for it until mid-June - three months after Zappone has "accepted" the role

In the run-up to the final appointment - with senior officials in DFA finalising a brief for what exactly the Special Envoy should do, Zappone - in advance of meeting the sec-gen to finalise it - submits her own vision for what the job ought to look like

The chronology is delicate but the crux of the documents are:

Simon Coveney told Oireachtas he merely communicated KZ's availability to his Dept, and little more than that.

But by March 4 Zappone was thanking him for "offering me this incredible opportunity" and seeking spec.

So:
- Zappone asks for Coveney's help to meet Samantha Power
- Zappone is told in March she'll get a role, starting in June - yet Taoiseach is "blindsided"
- in June Zappone asks Irish UN Amb why the delay
- Zappone draws up her own brief, incorporated into the final edition