Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

On Senator Ardagh's question, to be honest I do not have the exact date for when I got that text but I remember seeing it after the event because of the furore around it. I did not take any notice of it at the time I got it and I did not answer it.

I did not go and I was not there. So, I just do not have that date, I am afraid.

Deputy Gannon suggested that democratic values are under threat partly because insiders get jobs without process. There was a process here and the Department went through quite an extensive process in looking at whether there was added value in the role subsequently offered to Katherine Zappone. Looking at the roles that people like Nuala O'Loan, Tom Arnold and Kenneth Thompson played, these are all people who were in or around government. They are connected and proven to be good communicators and that is why they are asked to do these jobs. That should not be seen as them being insiders. I take the point made by the Deputy, which is why we can look at a new process that members feel is more likely to gain the public trust with roles like this. I would be more than open to that.

There was a question on lobbying that was asked twice. I am sorry because I should have answered it the first time. I did not regard Katherine Zappone as lobbying me. I had a conversation with her after she left office, when she was essentially ringing me to say goodbye. She was heading to New York or else she was there. I think she spoke to me before she left for New York. She basically said as part of that conversation "good luck with the UN Security Council job and if I can be of any help in a private capacity or a professional capacity, I would be delighted to be". It was not a phone call to make herself available for that. I suspect she rang around to a number of her colleagues to effectively say she was starting a new life in New York. I had a subsequent conversation with her around the United States presidential election because she was following it closely and suspected I would be doing so too. She updated me about her working with the United Nations Population Fund, UNFPA.

It is not fair to turn this into an assumption that every time she contacted me, she was lobbying me for a job. That is not how I saw it. I was the one who asked for my Secretary General's view on whether Katherine Zappone could add value to our team, given that she had worked with us quite a lot in the build-up to the role with the UN Security Council and that she was now living in New York. That is essentially what happened.

In response to Deputy Brady, like many people on this call, I do not hold on to text messages for long periods in terms of data on my phone and so on. From recollection and in an effort to try to be as open as I can with the committee, I got a text from the Tánaiste and I think it was the week before. He said in the next few days Katherine Zappone would be in Dublin and he was meeting her and was there anything he should know, basically. I do not remember the exact text but that is effectively the content. I got back to him to say I had been talking to her about a special envoy position that the Department is working on. Effectively, that was it. He essentially wanted an update on whether there was anything he should know. It was no more or less than that.

On the question of freedom of information, I will make available anything that is appropriate to be made available under that process. There is no issue or anything to hide.