Labour Minister of State Ann Phelan stormed out of a live radio debate with her constituency rivals on Monday night claiming that she had been "completely ignored".
The TD for Carlow-Kilkenny, who is Minister of State at the Department of Agriculture, Food and Marine and Transport, walked out of the KCLR, Carlow-Kilkenny radio station’s live election debate on Monday saying she was “just going to give up”.
“I came to this debate tonight. . . I’ve been completely ignored and I’ll tell you now, I’m fed up with the whole bloody lot of you,” said Ms Phelan before leaving the studio.
Ms Phelan was responding to a listener’s comment that there was “no new employment in Graiguenamanagh, no Bus Éireann services in the town, no incentive to work with low wages” when she was interrupted and decided to remove her microphone and leave the debate.
Before leaving the room Ms Phelan had begun her response to the listener’s comment.
“Well I’ll tell you what happened with the Bus Éireann incentive, which happened a number of years ago where we did a survey in the town to actually collect the number of people who would use the service,” she said.
“We held a public meeting and unfortunately very few people turned up to that meeting so if you have a lot of people turn up to a meeting and you go to Bus Éireann and say. . . ”
Ms Phelan’s voice could then be heard over the clamour of bickering and interruptions saying “it’s demand led, it’s demand led”, before she decided she’d had enough, stood up and left.
