Katherine Zappone Envoy Gig

Which politicians career has he ended?

I was asking about this person that you were talking about here "and now has effectively ended the career of one of finest politians on the scene in ireland"

His only internal challenger is Pascal the rascal and if Leo the leaks leaking goes to trial, Pascal will be taking over.

Leo looks like he's melting in that picture..

Yeah, I am aware of that, but the manner in how he has dealt with things, and how quickly he took his chance will surely have a few rethinking. Maybe not 🤷‍♂️

Couldn't help but giggle at the Indo deciding to do a review of the Piglet yesterday, coincidence 🤔 or perhaps a not subtle swipe at all concerned 😏

Barry "grumpy" cowan on morning Ireland now. Seems baffled at the entire debacle, not happy with Coveney"s appearance at the Dail committee, Quote "Katherine happy and excited about her appointment, when no one relevant knew about it"

More questions about deleted messages, not committing to whether resignations required.

Basically, huffing, puffying, poking and digging but ultimately fudging.

Leo just made a statement, explaining the delay for releasing the text message's, seems his explanation 🙄, he was annual leave 🙄

Not exactly helping Simons Coveney's situation 🤔

Simon Harris on morning Ireland now, seems to be in defence of Coveney mode

Harris floundering big time

I think Leo's excuse of being on annual leave is just as bad.

Leo has had too many chances at this stage imo. Too many lies, and obvious lies at that, to the point its insulting.

While I also think Coveney came up with the worst lie possible, I'm more inclined to give him a chance in all honesty. We're all human at the end of the day. That's his fib pass used up.

Leo on the other hand, has consistently lied about numerous separate events for months, and thrown several under the bus, to protect himself. The latest being the civil servant who responded to an FOI on the 25th of August saying he took all steps in accordance with the act, when it's evident he didn't. Could have waited til Leo was back off-alleged-"annual leave"

Mary Lou opting to let FF devour itself some more over this. Let the Cowen's etc call for sackings.

Serious pressure on now, rarely has Morning Ireland covered a story so much in one programme.

Well this who Zappone Envoy gig has really blown up now after weeks of shooing and hand waving saying there was nothing to see here. Was it Francie that said "No one hates a FG more than an a FG" or some such saying.

It has to be asked what was Coveney thinking with this Zappone appointment? Surely a capable minister such as him would what they need to do for a position like this. As for Varadkar, it seems anything that he is involved in just turns into an unmerciful mess. It is disappointing to see Coveney making such a mess of this because of all the politicians in FG he seemed to be the most capable one and didn't seem to be getting caught up in the Varadkar messes. For me there is no coming back from this for Coveney to go in and tell bare faced lies at the Oireactas meeting with this complete horsecrap of an excuse that he was hacked so he deleted the messages. I know they are trying to change the narrative now by saying "the government doesn't do business by text message" which is true except when they are looking to do something that they don't a record kept off.

The quote I think is from a FGer or former FGer and goes

'if you think Fine Gael hate Sinn Fein, wait until you see how much they hate each other'

@jammydodger wrote:

^^ This is exactly what I was thinking. Simon will be asked to stand aside to stop this issue from being a thorn when the Dail resumes. Internally in FG, I don't think this will put Coveney out of the race, but it'll silence any suggestions of a struggle until a new cabinet comes in.

@jmcc wrote:

This is very easily handwaved away. The FOI requests explicitly asks for Non-Personal Correspondence between Zappone and Varadkar about the event at the Merrion. It is very easily argued that the messages between Zappone and Varadkar about the event were entirely personal in nature and therefore outside the scope of the FOI request. Reading the texts, there is nothing formal or business-like within the messages. The fact that they may have been sent on his work phone is not relevant. Messages sent from your work phone are not automatically work messages, just like emails sent from your work email are not automatically work emails.

Yes indeed 😁