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

All I can say to that is that it is simply not true. At no point in any of the correspondence or in any of the documentation does Katherine Zappone ask me or the Department to make her a special envoy. The contact came the other way, as I have said and as the former Secretary General has confirmed. I spoke to him about whether or not we could use Katherine Zappone in our team in New York because we felt she could be an asset. We did not quite know how to do that. Niall Burgess came back to me a few days later to say the US was developing a special envoy role and, as it subsequently turned out, lots of other countries are doing something similar. I then went to Katherine Zappone to say, "Look, I spoke to the Secretary General about this; there is a possibility if the Department approves it and develops this role." She was very excited about that and I think that is very clear from her texts.