Howlin backs comments on O'Brien

Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform Brendan Howlin has backed Cabinet colleague Joan Burton’s comments that the Government has to review its contact with businessman Denis O’Brien.

Speaking in the Dáil today, Mr Howlin said: “There should be a consequence for those well-known people or not against whom adverse findings are adduced by a tribunal of inquiry”.

“I saw the gladhandling of the former leader of Fianna Fáil at a party conference. We’ll see who now shuns him,” he said.

Mr Howlin told Sinn Féin deputy leader Mary Lou McDonald: “We all have to make personal decisions, and the Government has to make its decisions in relation to any individual against whom adverse findings are made by a tribunal established by this House”.

Ms McDonald had referred to Ms Burton’s concerns about contacts with Mr O’Brien, and she said she believed Minister of State Lucinda Creighton shared those concerns. “She was critical of his attendance at the global economic forum last October,” Ms McDonald said.

“It seems to me that the Taoiseach takes an entirely different view beaming as he was from a photograph with the same individual,” she said in reference to the photograph of Enda Kenny and Mr O’Brien with others at the New York stock exchange.

Pointing out that there had to be consequences for those against whom adverse tribunal findings had been made, Mr Howlin said of the New York photo “The Taoiseach was invited - he didn’t issue invitations - to a particular function. Others were also invited. None of us can control the people who are photographed with us.”

Pressed about the Government invitation to Mr O’Brien to the economic global forum, the Minister said: “The invitations that went out replicated those who were invited to the first forum and that’s what happened.”

Ms Burton had warned her Government colleagues to review contacts with Mr O'Brien. She told the Dáil during the debate on the Mahon tribunal report that "there has been considerable public and political unease about the fact that Mr O'Brien has continued to pop up at various public events, most recently at the New York stock exchange".

She added: "It is perhaps time for the Government to reflect on how it should in future interact with people against whom adverse findings have been made by tribunals".