This evening.
Simon Coveney is addressing the Oireachtas Committee on Foreign Affairs about the appointment of Katherine Zappone.
Watch live here.
Earlier…
From left: Katherine Zappone, Leo Varadkar and Simon Coveney celebrate after Ireland secured a seat on the UN Security Council last year
Simon Coveney sought UN role for Katherine Zappone before controversial special envoy appointment https://t.co/1e6mPBb43v
— Independent.ie (@Independent_ie) August 31, 2021
This afternoon.
Ahead of an appearance later by Simon Coveney at an Oireachtas Committee on Foreign Affairs and Defence meeting to explain his role in the appointment of Katherine Zappone as a UN envoy for free speech.
Via Independent.ie:
In his opening statement to the committee the Fine Gael minister will say that Ms Zappone had reached out to him last summer to mention that she would be available “to help in any way she could in our work at the UN”.
His statement notes that when she served in Government the former independent TD worked as a special envoy for Ireland’s successful bid to be on the UN Security Council before she “stepped down and left politics last summer”.
“In February of this year we spoke and Katherine Zappone told me of work she was doing in the UN system. At no point in that conversation did I consider that she was lobbying me for a job.
“Following on from that conversation however, I reflected on the fact that Katherine Zappone was a former Irish Minister, had been heavily involved in our Security Council campaign, had campaigned all her life on issues of equality and was now living in New York.”
Mr Coveney said that late in February he met with his secretary general to review Ireland’s first months on the UN Security Council and at the end of the meeting asked for his view on whether Ms Zappone “could be of any use to our team in New York. He told me he would reflect on that”….
…Mr Coveney states that that in light of the “increasingly polarised debate on human rights internationally” including with the EU, his department officials recommended a role with a broad mandate focussing on freedom of expression…..
“I approached Katherine Zappone and asked if she’d be interested in taking this role in principle. She said she would and I handed the process back to my Secretary General.”
Good times.
Coveney sought UN role for Zappone before controversial special envoy appointment (Independent.ie)
on the radio ift.tt/3BZplRO Coveney said she contacted him and said ‘if there’s anything I can do I would be deeply interested, in helping with Ireland at the UN’
There’s going to be some wonderful revisionism in this hearing no doubt…
Translation: She’s great at hiding the bodies. Literally in some cases.
Exactly..
+1
+1
Theres no way Coveney decided out of the goodness of his heart to just offer this to her, at potential risk to himself of blowback. And since theres no obvious gain for him or FG, it must be something else…
national interest perhaps ?
Could you explain the exact benefits to the national interest of creating this position specifically for Katherine Zappone, and why she was so uniquely qualified that not a single other candidate was considered for the role, which was also unadvertised, against all public sector hiring guidelines?
Swap ‘national interests’ with ‘Coveney’s interests’ and you could be onto something.
Coves and Peter ”Jabba the Sutt” Sutherland must have saw a certain moral deficiency in her that suited their purposes.
Not everyone can do certain things and be OK with it, but some can, no sweat.
afraid I cannot, Simon,Loe or Micheál on the other hand might.
I don’t see how this is anything except a masterclass in how things should not be done.
If Katherine Zappone was the best candidate for the position, I can’t see why the application of the correct process would have yeilded any other result. I don’t see either, why perhaps the application process wasn’t opened up to the world of potentially well qualified and suitable candidates. How could anyone profess to know prior to seeing other applicants that they already KNEW the best candidate.
Where does one gain that level of insight ?
They have potentially settled for a sub optimal solution. They have also defended their chosen course of action. which was as you correctly point far from what would be seen as best practice –
Running the country like a family business…….a badly run family business at that
I was being a tad flippant mentioning the national interest, my apologies.
Thats fair, thats a well thought out response. I’d think along similar lines.
If Coveney and co. decided this position absolutely had to be created in the national interest then going by every public sector hiring guideline (and common sense…) they would have advertised it, and seen who would apply. Then they could have picked the best candidate for the role. Maybe it would even have been Katherine Zappone. But it would at least have been an open and transparent process.
But doing it the way it was actually done shows it was created explicitly for her, with no justification, competition, or transparency. Which would suggest its payback for _something_.
That’s what he came up with after all these weeks? Pretty lame.
Twisting himself in circles. https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/simon-coveney-admits-that-katherine-zappone-did-invite-him-to-her-merrion-hotel-party-40806176.html
My cynical mind thinks she needed a way to cover the cost of regular air fares to Ireland and concocted this UN position and then got on the blower to the lads to call in a favour. Payback for that swing vote or something else?
My thoughts too. I’d imagine she’d value the diplomatic status and perks that came with the role, all of which were likely to dwarf the reported salary.
Seriously, no one cares about this non-story.. never did…of all the stuff to pick on one of our ex Ministers on for lining their pockets after coming out of office, this one is not even registering for me, go on call me a cynic!
I dare you.
Not nearly cynical enough…
Bit of a Taoiseach’s Pet, perhaps, apart from that it’s the usual stuff that goes on internally, it’s just a bit rich when it’s done at that level.
I never appreciated her as a Politician, she was too much of an activist to be a Minister & I can’t see how she could truly represent our national interest on the World Stage, especially since she basically invented this job for herself.
She is, of course, as Woke as the day is long, eh?