IRISH POLITICS was getting to the point where Ministers would have to “go around covered in a cloak” for fear of meeting someone it was felt they should not be meeting, Labour leader Éamon Gilmore has said.
The Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs was speaking to reporters at the start of his party’s national conference, which opened at NUI Galway last night and continues until tomorrow.
Mr Gilmore was responding to recent criticisms of Minister for the Environment Phil Hogan for meeting Independent TD Michael Lowry, and the Taoiseach for allowing his photograph to be taken with businessman Denis O’Brien.
The Moriarty tribunal has made an adverse finding against Mr Lowry over the issuing of the allocation of the State’s first mobile phone licence to Mr O’Brien.
When it was put to him that his Labour colleague Minister for Social Protection Joan Burton, who was one of the most vocal critics of the O’Brien photograph, had also encountered Mr O’Brien in New York, Mr Gilmore said: “I think we’re getting to the point where Government Ministers and public representatives are going to have to go around covered in a cloak, lest they meet anybody or see anybody or have to cross the street to anybody.
“I mean, this is getting ridiculous. You can’t control who’s going to be in a photograph, you can’t control who you’ll bump into in a corridor. Public representatives and Ministers meet people all of the time. We are public representatives, we represent the public, we talk with the public, we engage with the public in whatever walk of life that they’re in.
“And this idea that somehow, that we could go around every day, operating some kind of a system that we have to cross the street if we see this one coming or cross the street if we see that one, that’s not real life.”
A spokeswoman for Ms Burton said yesterday there had been no meetings between the Minister and Mr O’Brien.
However, it has been independently confirmed that they exchanged greetings at the New York Stock Exchange building the same day the businessman was photographed with the Taoiseach.
When it was put to the Tánaiste that it was members of his own Government, including Ms Burton, who first raised the issue that there was a problem meeting certain individuals, he replied: “I’m not sure that that’s the case. To be honest, I think this is a bit of a distraction.
“The job of work that the Labour Party is doing, the job of work that this Government has to do, is the serious job of work of getting the Irish economy to recover.”
Asked whether Minister for Justice Alan Shatter should confirm or deny meeting Mr Lowry, he said: “That’s a matter for him. It’s up to every Minister to decide how they organise their diary and who they meet.”
The conference marks the centenary of Labour’s foundation and Mr Gilmore told delegates it had been “a century of struggle, campaigning and achievement”.
