Sorca Clarke (Longford-Westmeath, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister back this morning. It is clear that he offered Katherine Zappone the job as UN special envoy very early in March. It is also clear that, as the Minister has acknowledged, he knew Katherine Zappone wanted a role in the UN and he made that happen. He made it happen for a friend. It is clear Dr. Zappone wrote the job description and the terms of employment that were attached to it. That left the Minister's Department justifying the making of that appointment. That is absolutely disgraceful. On 30 July, the Minister told national radio that the job was not made for her but the documents released yesterday tell a vastly different story. The reality is that she wrote the job specification, that she influenced the duration of the role and that, when the brief came to be finalised, Katherine Zappone literally submitted her own brief and told the Minister by text that a concept note was being developed. The Minister also told the media that Fine Gael Ministers knew nothing of the appointment until 20 minutes before the Cabinet meeting. That is also not true because we now know that the Tánaiste knew 11 days beforehand and that the Minister, Deputy Donohoe, knew much earlier.

I put it to the Minister that he misled the Cabinet and that he misled this committee through extreme economy with the truth. I also put it to the Minister that he was not truthful then and that he is not being entirely truthful now, despite being given two opportunities by this committee to do so. As a member of this committee, I am deeply concerned that any Minister would seek to use this committee in what appears to be an effort to save his own political neck because that reeks of the sense of entitlement that has brought us here today.

I will move on to another point. A lot of communication traffic between Katherine Zappone and key players has been released which shows the access she had to the Minister, his Department, the Cabinet and the Government. The Minister can deny it but there was pressurising. In my world, repeated messages represent pressurising. Dr. Zappone was pushing for this job to such an extent that, when she was not getting the response she wanted, she approached our representative at the UN, who raised the matter for her months before the Government knew about it.

We know that Katherine Zappone had direct access, and that she used that access to the Minister, to the Department, to our representative at the UN, to the Minister, Deputy Donohoe, and to the Tánaiste, Deputy Varadkar. Who else, then, does the Minister know of that she had direct access to? In that use of soft power, she used her exposure to high-ranking officials to her own ends and her own gain and the Minister played a central role in that. How can he sit here today and continue to justify his statement that there was no lobbying, because very clearly there was?