FORMER Fianna Fáil minister Frank Fahey has rejected an allegation that he assaulted another TD in a row over a report on a fishing vessel compensation scheme.
Using Oireachtas privilege, Fine Gael TD Tom Sheahan yesterday accused Mr Fahey of assaulting an unnamed Oireachtas member, and alleged he threatened TDs and Senators who spoke out on an Ombudsman’s report that was critical of a scheme he championed.
Mr Sheahan, a TD for Kerry South, made the comments at a meeting of the Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture and Fisheries yesterday. It was discussing Ombudsman Emily O’Reilly’s report on the Lost at Sea scheme.
“I can personally state that Mr Fahey not only abused but attacked and threatened members of this House regarding this scheme,” said Mr Sheahan.
“One of the members here was assaulted by Frank Fahey in this House. Members of the media were warned and threatened.”
Mr Fahey, one of the TDs stranded abroad by volcanic fog, could not attend the meeting. He later rejected Mr Sheahan’s comments as “yet another false allegation by Fine Gael over the Lost at Sea scheme”.
Acting committee chairman Bobby Aylward (Fianna Fáil) asked Mr Sheahan to withdraw the allegation, saying he was making a very serious charge. Mr Sheahan refused.
The scheme was initiated by Mr Fahey in 2001 and allotted quota capacity to families whose vessels were lost at sea. The report found a Donegal family had not received just or fair treatment when it was excluded from the scheme.
Francis Byrne, his 16-year-old son Jimmy and three crew members, were lost with their fishing vessel in 1981. Mr Byrne’s family missed the deadline by a year.
Notwithstanding the late application, the Ombudsman found there was maladministration in the set-up of the scheme because of inadequate advertising and the department’s decision to inform some families but not others.
She recommended that the Byrnes be paid compensation of €245,000 arising from their exclusion. The department has refused to do so. Ms O’Reilly has made repeated efforts to have the report’s recommendations adopted. After an earlier refusal to discuss the report, the committee made its own conclusions. The Ombudsman and her officials attended yesterday’s meeting.
One of the scheme’s flaws, Ms O’Reilly said, was that it distinguished between two classes of people. Two fishing families from the Aran islands had made representations to Mr Fahey.
They were among 16 families written to by the department advising them of the scheme. She said no attempt was made to contact other potentially eligible families on the basis that their files could not be easily accessed. Six applications, including two from Mr Fahey’s constituency, were ultimately successful.