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

The honest answer to that question is that I do not know. The deletion of the tweet certainly did not arise from an instruction from me or anybody on my team. Having looked at the tweet afterwards because of the public interest in it, it looks to me that somebody raised the issue with Mr. Burgess on social media and pointed out that the people in the photograph were bunched tightly together and that he responded by accepting that they had let their guard down and that it should not have happened. I think the tweet was deleted after that. That is my understanding. Nobody was leaning on Mr. Burgess, as far as I am aware, to delete the tweet. I presume he realised that a mistake had been made, acknowledged it and took the photograph down.

It is important to try to get some perspective on this. We are looking at this after 19 months of Covid restrictions, sacrifice and the things Senator Ardagh rightly outlined such as the struggles many families have faced. I can understand why people would look at the photograph and ask how the incident happened and be angered by it. All I can say, however, is what happened insofar as my involvement that night was concerned. The incident was mentioned to me not as a major issue but as a stupid mistake. The then Secretary General acknowledged it and the agenda moved on. When the matter was raised again, 18 months later, in the media, legitimately, and there was concern about it, I had to respond to that, obviously. That is why I asked the Secretary General to undertake the report. Senator Craughwell said he did not think it was appropriate for a new Secretary General to be asked to do the report. If, however, the Senator asks the Secretary General, I think he will say he felt he had an obligation to take it on, given the fact that this had happened in the Department, that there was reputational damage associated with it and that we needed to address that collectively, as a Department, which is what we have tried to do in this report.