Coveney denies arrogance in handling of Zappone appointment ahead of motion of no confidence

Minister for Foreign Affairs Simon Coveney has said he did not act arrogantly in handling the “fiasco” of the Katherine Zappone appointment, ahead of a motion of no confidence in him tomorrow.

The Minister for Foreign Affairs said he was “embarrassed” by it, but stuck by the appointment of the former minister to a UN special envoy role in principle, while apologising for how it was handled.

“The first thing I’d say is that I’m embarrassed about this. This has been a fiasco since the issue was brought to Cabinet and approved by Cabinet,” he said, but returned to his defence of his motivation for the appointment, which he said was “appropriate”.

Mr Coveney said he had seen no problem or controversy with the appointment until it emerged from Cabinet. “This was this was using a process that many other countries are using to good effect and putting somebody who I felt was qualified for the job into into that role, it was no more or less complicated than that ,” he said.

He said his failure to identify this as an issue did not mean he was arrogant. “There’s no arrogance whatsoever about an effort by me as the Minister for Foreign Affairs to try to put a special envoy in place to advocate for freedom of expression and LGBTQ rights internationally.

“That’s what we were trying to do here, nobody was trying to pull the wool over anybody’s eyes,” said Mr Coveney. He said he had not breached the Freedom of Information (FoI) law when deleting texts from his phone.

“When a conversation concludes, and information isn’t needed to be held on to on my phone, I clear unnecessary information, lots of others do that as well. But I certainly did not break any FoI rules.”

He blamed himself for the handling of the story which could have been dealt with with a “lot more detail and a lot more transparency”.

“My role in this this has contributed to this becoming a political story that it didn’t need to become,” he said. “It is a real frustration and quite frankly an embarrassment for me to be the centre of attention for all the wrong reasons.”

He denied the Fine Gael leadership was out of touch and reiterated his earlier defence that Ms Zappone had misunderstood conversations with him if she believed she had been offered the job as far back as this March.

He said he “expects” to get support across Government when the confidence vote is taken, and that he has “reached out to people to give them reassurance in that regard”.

Mr Coveney was speaking after the Fine Gael party think in concluded at the Trim Castle Hotel in Co Meath.

He would not be drawn on whether he had told Ms Zappone that he planned to tell an Oireachtas committee that she had misinterpreted their conversation.

“I called out of courtesy to say that the documents that we were releasing would be released and that was a courtesy call. Nothing more than that.” He said he would be “surprised” if Ms Zappone’s version of events differed from his.

“Nothing I said in committee would be inconsistent with Katherine Zappone’s view, in my view,” he said. Earlier he conceded that he “could have and should have been clearer with her” on the issue of whether a job had been offered.

With the Dáil set to vote confidence in him later this week, Mr Coveney said he would get through the process and would be honest in relation to his role in the appointment.

He said, however, “it’s not a it’s not a pleasant thing to be the centre of attention in a no confidence motion. It’s not something I ever expected to experience.”

Speaking of the appointment, Mr Coveney said: “It was no more complicated than [previous envoy appointments]. I just don’t see why people see that as an arrogant thing to do. This wasn’t about preferring anybody, it was about trying to develop a role consistent with what many other countries are doing internationally, and trying to put somebody we regarded as well qualified to do that.”

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