Presidential candidate Catherine Connolly has declined to say if she asked a woman she employed in 2018 what she intended to do with guns and ammunition found in her possession four years earlier.
In an interview on Virgin Media News, Ms Connolly was repeatedly asked if she asked Ursula Ní Shionnáin, an activist with Éirigí, what she intended to do with arms in her possession at the time of her arrest in 2012. Ms Ní Shionnáin was convicted to six years imprisonment for firearms offences in 2014 in the Special Criminal Court.
Ms Connolly, the Independent left candidate, said that Ms Ní Shionnáin was perfectly qualified for the position she was offered working as an Irish language adviser to the Galway West TD. She said several times that she was a “model example of rehabilitation.”
Pressed by interviewer Colette Fitzpatrick on why she never asked Ms Ní Shionnáin what use was intended for the guns, Ms Connolly replied that the person had served her prison sentence and was rehabilitated.
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Ms Fitzpatrick said: “You have said repeatedly during this campaign Catherine that you’re a voice for peace. And what is a gun other than violence itself? It is only used to threaten, to maim, to disfigure, to injure, to kill people, and you didn’t think to ask her, where were those guns going to end up?”
Ms Connolly replied: “This is a woman who served her prison sentence and was rehabilitated, and we really need to talk about what rehabilitation means.”
When asked by Ms Fitzpatrick if she would employ the woman in Áras an Uachtaráin, Ms Connolly said Ms Ní Shionnáín already had a career and added she was not going to discuss who she would employ if elected president.
Similarly asked if she would appoint one or other of two former MEPs, Mick Wallace and Clare Daly, to the Council of State, Ms Connolly replied: “I’m not going to speculate on who I put on the Council of State, which is a very important body that will advise me in relation to different matters. And it’s really important that we don’t speculate as to who I put on.
“I would be looking for diversity, and I’d be looking for expertise to help me in relation to that,” she said.
Ms Connolly said she had been struck by the “violence of the language” used by broadcaster and former Fine Gael TD Ivan Yates when he had advised Fine Gael to “smear the bejasus out of her.”
“I think he really did me a favour, and he did the people of Ireland a favour by using that language to clarify what Fine Gael were actually doing.”
Asked about her trip to Syria in 2018, Ms Connolly was asked about comments in July that she had paid for the trip herself. She said she had said that to clarify that the trip had not been funded by the Syrian regime or by any other body.
When asked that it was taxpayer funds rather than her own money, Ms Connolly replied: “The taxpayer funds my salary. The taxpayer funds the three allowances that I get. One for travel, one for an office, which I back up. And then this particular one, which allows for research and policy.”
She dismissed any suggestion that she was being used. “It would be very hard to use me as propaganda or to stage management, actually, in any sphere. I’m an independent candidate with an independent mind, and I think that it would be very difficult to stage manage me,” she said.
She said that her one regret is that she probably should not have met Faris al-Shahabi, a supporter of the Assad regime.
“I had nothing to do with Assad. I’m on record for condemning him. But by contrast, Micheál Martin met with Assad, and we know that, and very few questions were asked of him actually meeting this man,” she said.
She agreed that US president Donal Trump deserves some credit for the peace deal that has been reached for Gaza, adding she hoped the peace would last.
She said the US president was volatile and unpredictable.
“It is interesting the comments and labels that have been used in relation to me… that I’m a loony left, that I’m a nun, [that] I’m populist in the manner of Trump, [according to] different commentators and different papers.”
