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

That is a fair question. The reason I did not delete the text messages from Katherine Zappone was because I wanted to be, first of all, absolutely transparent and they were still on my phone. As far as I was concerned, the conversation with Katherine Zappone, which was primarily around this role that we are now discussing, went on for quite a long time. I did not have an obligation to release the texts around the Biden election and so on under FOI because it does not relate to Government business, but I wanted to release all texts between myself and Katherine Zappone that I had on my phone, and that is what I did. Unfortunately, I did not have the text exchange with the Tánaiste still on my phone for reasons that I outlined earlier. That is why I was very pleased that he published those texts which were consistent, in terms of content, with what I said to the committee last week.