John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I will make a couple of brief points. On 19 July, in a text communication between the Minister and the Tánaiste, when the latter inquired about the LGBT envoy position, the Minister stated: "Yeah, I spoke to Katherine tonight. She's meeting Niall Burgess on Wednesday to finalise a 12 month contract to be an Irish Govt Special Envoy ...". We now know that changed to a two-year position. Mr. Burgess, in his interaction earlier, stated that a two-year rather than one-year contract would be better for the envoy role and that this was what Katherine Zappone had said to him at the meeting on 21 July. Not alone had we Katherine Zappone writing the terms of her own contract for a position that the Minister had clearly offered her on 4 March, but we now have Katherine Zappone going into that meeting with the Secretary General and dictating the duration of the contract, which the Minister clearly believed was a 12-month contract. She went in and negotiated a two-year contract. When was the Minister made aware of that? It is bizarre that there are zero communications between the Secretary General and the Minister - emails, text messages or minutes. Nothing exists.