Results 5,661-5,680 of 40,897 for speaker:Simon Coveney

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Foreign Affairs and Trade, and Defence: Appointment of Special Envoys: Minister for Foreign Affairs and Defence (7 Sep 2021)

Simon Coveney: The answer with respect to all of those questions is "No".

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Foreign Affairs and Trade, and Defence: Appointment of Special Envoys: Minister for Foreign Affairs and Defence (7 Sep 2021)

Simon Coveney: I do not, except to say that a cooling-off period only applies if there is a conflict of interest. I did not see a conflict of interest.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Foreign Affairs and Trade, and Defence: Appointment of Special Envoys: Minister for Foreign Affairs and Defence (7 Sep 2021)

Simon Coveney: Sorry, Deputy, can you repeat the question?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Foreign Affairs and Trade, and Defence: Appointment of Special Envoys: Minister for Foreign Affairs and Defence (7 Sep 2021)

Simon Coveney: That was the idea of my Department. We had 12 envoys at that time. We were campaigning to be on the UN Security Council. The Deputy might remember it was a very competitive campaign, with Norway, Ireland and Canada, three very prominent countries, in the UN system. We were competing against each other for two places. Many people were surprised that Ireland got more votes than Canada, but...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Foreign Affairs and Trade, and Defence: Appointment of Special Envoys: Minister for Foreign Affairs and Defence (7 Sep 2021)

Simon Coveney: I cannot remember the exact sequence of events, to be honest, but-----

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Foreign Affairs and Trade, and Defence: Appointment of Special Envoys: Minister for Foreign Affairs and Defence (7 Sep 2021)

Simon Coveney: -----our Department was certainly keen that she would play a role, which she did, and she assisted significantly in that regard.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Foreign Affairs and Trade, and Defence: Appointment of Special Envoys: Minister for Foreign Affairs and Defence (7 Sep 2021)

Simon Coveney: I do not think she ever came forward with a request to be an envoy. She clearly wanted to assist our campaign. I believe that we came back to her as a Department and asked her to be an envoy.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Foreign Affairs and Trade, and Defence: Appointment of Special Envoys: Minister for Foreign Affairs and Defence (7 Sep 2021)

Simon Coveney: 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...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Foreign Affairs and Trade, and Defence: Appointment of Special Envoys: Minister for Foreign Affairs and Defence (7 Sep 2021)

Simon Coveney: No, I did not. I did not even respond to that message. Samantha Power, of course, is the head of USAID and she is a very prominent Irish American. I know of Samantha Power but I certainly would not know her well enough to make an introduction like this and I do not think it would be appropriate anyway, so I did not do it.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Foreign Affairs and Trade, and Defence: Appointment of Special Envoys: Minister for Foreign Affairs and Defence (7 Sep 2021)

Simon Coveney: I think we are all contacted by people in that regard.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Foreign Affairs and Trade, and Defence: Appointment of Special Envoys: Minister for Foreign Affairs and Defence (7 Sep 2021)

Simon Coveney: It is part of public life.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Foreign Affairs and Trade, and Defence: Appointment of Special Envoys: Minister for Foreign Affairs and Defence (7 Sep 2021)

Simon Coveney: I do, and I can see how people would read that interpretation into this, which is why I regret that I have not provided more clarification in regard to what happened before now. I understand why the politics of this have been controversial. All I can say is that the Department went through a pretty rigorous process to develop and recommend the role that subsequently was offered to Katherine...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Foreign Affairs and Trade, and Defence: Appointment of Special Envoys: Minister for Foreign Affairs and Defence (7 Sep 2021)

Simon Coveney: The way it works is that I think it is prudent to remove the information on my phone that is no longer relevant. In other words, if I have had a text conversation with somebody that is done and dusted and I am moving on from it, I would often clear that unless there is a reason to hold onto it. Certainly, when I had the text exchange with the Tánaiste, I regarded that matter as closed...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Foreign Affairs and Trade, and Defence: Appointment of Special Envoys: Minister for Foreign Affairs and Defence (7 Sep 2021)

Simon Coveney: If I had received a freedom of information request in respect of those exchanges, I would have but this happened before those requests came in. They came in the day after the Cabinet meeting.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Foreign Affairs and Trade, and Defence: Appointment of Special Envoys: Minister for Foreign Affairs and Defence (7 Sep 2021)

Simon Coveney: No. I do not do that. Public business and departmental business should be carried out on the Department account.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Foreign Affairs and Trade, and Defence: Appointment of Special Envoys: Minister for Foreign Affairs and Defence (7 Sep 2021)

Simon Coveney: That was a mistake by me. I should have personally told the Taoiseach that this appointment was coming up. I honestly did not see it as a controversial appointment. There were a lot of other things on that day that many people would have thought were much more substantial than this part-time appointment. It was mistake by me, however. A Taoiseach should never be hearing something for the...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Foreign Affairs and Trade, and Defence: Appointment of Special Envoys: Minister for Foreign Affairs and Defence (7 Sep 2021)

Simon Coveney: First, I give my Department an awful lot more credit than the Deputy does. She is essentially accusing my former Secretary General of lying as well, if what the Deputy has just outlined is her position. All I can say is that the sequence of events as they happened is as I have outlined them today. The FOI release backs that up. I was the one who mentioned a special envoy role to Katherine...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Foreign Affairs and Trade, and Defence: Appointment of Special Envoys: Minister for Foreign Affairs and Defence (7 Sep 2021)

Simon Coveney: I accept that my answers to this committee were somewhat sloppy last week and that has raised ambiguity and so on. The Deputy is rightly probing hard on those issues because I should have been much clearer last week.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Foreign Affairs and Trade, and Defence: Appointment of Special Envoys: Minister for Foreign Affairs and Defence (7 Sep 2021)

Simon Coveney: Well, I-----

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Foreign Affairs and Trade, and Defence: Appointment of Special Envoys: Minister for Foreign Affairs and Defence (7 Sep 2021)

Simon Coveney: All I-----