Thread by @gavreilly

Oireachtas Committee on Foreign Affairs now in public session with Simon Coveney...

Watch live here: oireachtas.ie/en/oireachtas-…

Will try to keep updates confined to this thread

"I intend to ensure that the Minister is given a fair hearing, and that members have an adequate opportunity to question the Minister," says chairman Charlie Flanagan in a longer-than-usual overture

Before Coveney can speak, a point of order from SF's John Brady... He's taking issue with the fact that Coveney's letter to the committee last Thursday (addressing inconsistencies; circumstances of phone hacking, etc.) appeared in the media before it arrived in members' inboxes

Coveney begins.

"The first thing I want to do is apologise... due to the sloppiness of some of my answers to your legitimate questions last week"

Coveney: "The fact is I have contributed to much of that criticism and commentary. I’ve had the privilege of being in public life for 23 years [...] this is the first time that my integrity has been questioned on my political actions"

Coveney: "In truth this has rumbled on for far too long and should have come to an end on the basis of a clear and credible explanation before now."

Humble pie

"Katherine Zappone did not ask me for a job, at any stage" - all she wanted was advice on how to get into that area

Coveney using opening statement to address one gaping issue in last week's timeline:

He says Niall Burgess came back to him on Feb 26 about creating an envoy role for Ireland; "It was in that context that I raised the possibility" with Zappone, which he did by phone on March 3rd

Coveney: "it wasn’t a job offer at that stage, as I made it very clear that the concept needed to be developed by the Department...

"I should have been clearer with Katherine on the extent of the work needed in the Department before a formal role could be offered to her."

Coveney acknowledges "making mistakes in recent weeks" and that this has created "a political embarrassment for the Government"

[David Lynch voice] Same as it ever was

https://twitter.com/_BrianMahon_/status/1435170405719871488

Coveney tells Barry Cowen that Niall Burgess (Dept's Secretary General) approached him "in early March" hoping to initiate an Irish special envoy following similar moves in US. On that basis he contacted Zappone. He says it was the role at that point was a "concept" not yet a job

Cowen observes that ministers, after leaving office, are supposed to observe a one-year cooling-off period before engaging in work with any body they interacted with as ministers. He suggests this was breached because Zappone, in office, was Ireland's envoy for the UNSC bid

Coveney: In contacting me Zappone was "clearly trying to find a role for herself in the UN"

Cowen: That's the point. Ministers can't work with former bodies within 12 months

Coveney: "I don't believe there was a conflict of interest. It was a matter for Katherine to deal with"

SF's John Brady directly accuses Coveney of misleading the committee; he says yesterday's data dump does show Zappone was lobbying for a role.

The subsequent exchanges with Coveney effectively amount to a difference of opinion.

Some Govt sources point to the official lobbying guidelines: the rules Barry Cowen refers to, with a 12-month cooling-off period, only apply to ex-ministers moving into the private sector lobbying.ie/help-resources…

Coveney tells Brady that there are no written records of a conversation where Niall Burgess expressed a desire to create a special envoy role. It was an informal conversation

(This would be why there was no account of it in yesterday's data dump)

Brady reads KZ's appreciative text of March 4 ("Thank you so, so much..."). "You offered KZ a job in and around the 4th. Would I be right in saying that?"

SC: "No, you wouldn't be right, Deputy."

JB: "You're trying to fix the documents to fit a wholly unbelievable narrative."

FG Senator Joe O'Reilly says the job "sounds and reads like something that you and the secretary-general brought together".

Coveney says if it seems "he instructed the Department" to create the job, "that's certainly not the case... They certainly say 'no' to me" if not agreeing

Coveney: "I've said last week, and I say it again today: mistakes have been made by me that have undermined the credibility of appointing special envoys in the future. I would like to de-politicise that process in the future"

SD's Gary Gannon; If KZ thought she had a job on March 4th, "Do you regret not dissuading her from that notion?"

Coveney: "Yeah, Deputy. I think it would have been helpful with the benefit of hindsight if I'd responded to that text."

Gannon: If no job was offered in March, then why did Zappone text back in April reminding him he'd mentioned June as a start date?

Coveney: She said to me she was working in the UN FPA until the end of June; I said it would take that long to flesh out the prospective role anyway

Gannon: "She had a start date for a job that didn't exist yet and happened been offered, and you did nothing to dissuade her of that notion... It barely seems believable"

Coveney mentions end-June is Pride Week and it was implied the envoy role may be announced around that time

Gannon suggests Zappone's contact to both Donohoe and Coveney, seeking advice on UN job roles, should have appeared in the lobbying register

Coveney "doesn't accept that portrayal of events". Says he's sometimes contacted by people he doesn't know at all, seeking career advice.

Gannon: You've been a minister for over 10 years. How long have you been deleting texts for, and aren't you aware that you're required to retain them for FOI?

Coveney: I delete texts when conversations conclude "as a matter of course when I don't think it's necessary" to retain

Coveney: Varadkar had asked a text, and I'd responded to it - effectively considered the correspondence closed.

"If I was trying to hide the existence of a text exchange with the Tánaiste, I wouldn't have introduced it to the public in this committee last week"

Coveney tells Gannon he deleted the texts from Varadkar before any FOI requests were made seeking access to them.

Gerard Craughwell notes that, as Minister for Defence, Coveney might have had a phone issued by the Defence Forces which would be encrypted.

Does Coveney have an encrypted phone? Has he ever requested one? And is it reckless not to have, or seek, one?

Coveney's phone is issued by Dept of Foreign Affairs; "I am cautious about the use of that phone because that phone has been compromised... in August 2020 I was subject to a phishing attack via the Telegram app... my identity was used"

Coveney "was aware of the political consequences"..."the Department assessed that this fell into the realm of a cyberattack"... "I took extensive advice from the head of the National Cyber Security Centre in that respect"

[Again, Taoiseach told me last week he didn't know of it]

Coveney remarks that Angela Merkel's phone has been hacked in the past, notwithstanding the security on it.

"In the world we live in today, despite security arrangements, there are some who would try to hack people's phones and access information, so I'm cautious as a result."

On Zappone role: DFA has standing sanction to create roles and didn't need approval from Dept of Public Expenditure. The only inquiry was about the prospective impact on Zappone's pension

FF's James Lawless: Zappone was previously appointed as an envoy in 2019, for Ireland's UNSC bid, while still in Cabinet. Whose idea was that?

Coveney: "That was the idea of my Department... we were campaigning... we had a dozen envoys". Can't remember the exact series of events

"I don't think she ever came forward with a request to be an envoy" in 2019.

Coveney says not only did he not arrange an introduction for Zappone with Samantha Power, he didn't even reply to Zappone's inquiry.

He doesn't know her well enough and it would be inappropriate anyway

Lawless: Were you specifically advised to delete messages?

Coveney's answer doesn't include any specific advice.

Lawless: Do you accept that under FOI you are required to retain those exchanges?

Coveney: If I had a FOI request in relation to those exchanges, yes...

Lawless: How can it be that nobody, throughout March, April, May, June or July didn't think to mention this appointment to the Taoiseach?

Coveney: That's on me. I honestly didn't see it as a controversial appointment.

SF's Sorca Clarke: It's clear you knew Katherine Zappone wanted a UN posting, and it's clear you made it happen. On July 30 you told national radio the job wasn't made for her; the documents show she wrote the spec, influenced the duration, and literally submitted her own brief

Clarke: "You've misled this committee through an extreme economy of truth". She accuses Coveney of "trying to save his own political neck" and believes the committee is being misled today

Coveney: "You're essentially accusing my former Sec Gen of lying as well. All I can say is the sequence of events, as they happened, are as I outlined them today... I was the one who mentioned a Special Envoy role with KZ for the time, she didn't mention it with me"

Coveney: "I would accept that my answers to this committee have been somewhat sloppy last week; that has raised ambiguity and so on, and you're rightly probing hard on that"

Clarke: "After 23 years in public life, have you not learned at this point not to walk into doors?"

Clarke raises the fact that the email address used by Zappone to contact Niall Burgess was attached to a company (the Centre for Progressive Change) which was struck off in 2017.

[Not sure what the relevance of that is; it's likely still Zappone's de facto personal email]

Coveney says the Department worked "night and day" to publish its largest ever FOI reply on its website yesterday; the Department believes it's in full compliance with the Act.

[Not sure how that can be true when it knows Coveney has deleted text messages on it, however benign]

Clarke: If you routinely delete messages when conversation is closed, why retain Zappone's messages about Joe Biden's election?

Coveney: Good Q. The conversation with Zappone, primarily around envoy role, was still ongoing

Burgess tells Cathal Berry: The tasking was proposed by the Department; following meeting with Zappone the only change was the length of the mandate, making it a two-year position, so that it could build up a network - I thought that was reasonable

FF Sen Catherine Ardagh finds it quite "dochreidte" that a narrative is being peddled that Zappone misunderstood what was being offered to her. Zappone is a competent individual and "it beggars belief."

Coveney: I rang Katherine Zappone last Sunday, but it was a courtesy to call to say the Department would be releasing an extensive file on Monday; it wasn't a long conversation. She asked me what was being released; I went through the texts she had sent.

Again on his deleted texts with the Taoiseach, Coveney insists he had nothing to hide and mentions again that it was him who first mentioned their existence, at last week's hearing. If he was trying to hide them he wouldn't have done so

Ardagh: Are you sure it wasn't lobbying?

SC: KZ was "an enthusiastic person who wanted to get an update... I can absolutely see, given the narrative that's developed since, why people would see that as lobbying. I certainly wouldn't see it as that."

Coveney again accepts that the Taoiseach, or his key advisor, should have been pre-notified about the plan to bring Zappone's approval to Cabinet.

He says when it came up at Cabinet on the day, the Taoiseach "was surprised by it. He wasn't annoyed, but he was surprised"

On filling envoy positions, Coveney: "you want a specific job done and then somebody generally get was hand-picked because of the specific conditions"

(Ex-Concern CEO Tom Arnold is food systems envoy; ex-ambo Kenneth Thompson is envoy to Francophone Africa as we've no embassies)

David Stanton again asks if there was specific advice about deleting text messages: "I was advised around that particular incident... that is an issue that the Department has some expertise around"

SF's Lynn Boylan: "For any ordinary Joe or Jane Soap watching on, what they're seeing is somebody who has access to senior politicians, and using that access to secure themselves employment"

After a bit of to-and-fro, Coveney confirms to Lynn Boylan that when they spoke on February 26, he told her "I had no introduction to make" with Samantha Power or anyone at USAID.

No mention of envoy role in that conversation because it didn't yet exist

Boylan: So even when Zappone was contacting the Irish ambassador at the UN asking about a role which hadn't yet been created, nobody thought of getting back to her and saying, 'Cool the jets, Katherine?'

Coveney: With the benefit of hindsight it would have been helpful

FF senator Diarmuid Wilson reads a bit from the National Archives Act which requires all records to be retained by the Department in which they are held and not to be disposed of, save for where duplicates already exist.

How does your practice of deleting texts comply with this?

Coveney: "It looks as if I haven't published responses to her texts. That's because by and large I didn't respond"

On FOI compliance, Coveney indirectly cites the same need for security caution. He confirms to Wilson he still does it when conversation has effectively concluded.

But Coveney adds: "Anything to do with Govt Business is the property of the Department, and I certainly do not - and will not - clear messages that relate to Govt business on my phone. I'm talking about other interactions that I have; when issues are closed I simply move on"

Coveney implies he doesn't see the texts between himself and Varadkar as being Government business, though he understands that others will see otherwise

Gary Gannon is back. He queries why Coveney thought it might be worth going off to examine a possible role for KZ on Feb 24, despite believing her message only two days previously (seeking an intro with Samantha Power) was inappropriate

Coveney: "I thought she was a suitable candidate. Katherine Zappone is not someone I have a close personal relationship with, but I have a professional respect for..."

Barry Cowen says Zappone's texts amount to pressure to conclude the process. "Do you at least begin to see the reality emerge on foot of your initial concept offering, that there was clear and obvious lobbying... to realise the commitment, the concept, the offer you have made?"

Coveney: "I can understand why the public, looking at this political fiasco as it's unfolded, would interpret this in the way some of you have - as this being lobbying and so on."

As the meeting wraps up, SF's John Brady says Katherine Zappone should be invited to appear.

And that's all she wrote.

In the words of a Sunday Tribune slogan during the @cooper_m era: Questions answered; answers questioned.

@cooper_m Takeaway points coming up on the @VirginMediaNews at 12:30.