‘A good few untruths there’: Kilkenny Fianna Fáil TD speaks out on party’s presidential election review

Carlow/Kilkenny TD Peter ‘Chap’ Cleere has criticised the fallout from Fianna Fáil and Jim Gavin’s disastrous presidential campaign which will continue into the new year as the long-awaited review into the party’s handling of the episode was published this week.

Party TDs, MEPs and senators attended a five-hour meeting at Leinster House on Tuesday evening to discuss the debacle and question leadership on the timeline of events that led to Mr Gavin’s withdrawal after it was revealed that he had failed to return €3,300 in overpaid rent to a tenant in 2009.

Some of the standout information contained in the review was that Taoiseach, Micheál Martin, met with Mr Gavin just once before he was selected as the party candidate, that no polling on his popularity had been conducted prior to this and that leadership had been alerted to a potential tenancy issue before the campaign had begun, contrary to messaging from the Taoiseach in the aftermath of Mr Gavin’s exit from the race.

Speaking to The Kilkenny People after attending the Leinster House meeting, Deputy Cleere, remained critical of his party’s handling of the election and candidate selection process.

“The Fianna Fáil leadership handled it very, very poorly, made some really bad decisions, didn’t do their due diligence and ultimately that ended in us not having a candidate in the presidential election”, Deputy Cleere said.

“The report was delivered, but there are as many questions as answers still left”, he added.

There was a sense of tension even before the meeting began as TDs were sent the review just over an hour before the start time of 7pm, leaving little opportunity for them to read and process the information given.

The mood dropped even further as confirmation was provided that the Taoiseach and other leaders indeed knew of a potential problem surrounding Mr Gavin’s time as a landlord and that this information was withheld from the parliamentary party before he was elected as Fianna Fáil’s candidate over MEP Billy Kelleher.

“I asked the Taoiseach specifically about this and he confirmed that he was made aware of a tenant issue, not the specifics of it, but was made aware that there was an issue there”, Deputy Cleere outlined.

“The problem a lot of people have is that the Taoiseach would have known that there was a potential issue there but never told the parliamentary party this”.

The lack of transparency around the Taoiseach’s knowledge of the tenancy issue while he was also reportedly pressuring backbenchers to support Mr Gavin’s candidacy has severely dented faith in his leadership and trust in the senior members of the party.

In an appearance on the Six One News and at a parliamentary party meeting in the wake of Mr Gavin’s withdrawal, the Taoiseach claimed to have no prior knowledge whatsoever of any problem relating to the former Dublin football manager’s dealing with tenants, something shown to be false in the review and this dishonesty is causing concern within party ranks.

“The big challenge here is that Micheál and the leadership of Fianna Fáil knew that there was a potential issue, but still didn’t tell any of the parliamentary party who they were trying to convince to vote for Jim Gavin because they felt he was the right candidate”, Deputy Cleere asserted.

“The Taoiseach then said that he didn’t know anything about it at a party meeting and subsequently said: “Well actually, we were aware that there was some kind of an issue, but we didn’t know the extent of it "".

“There’s a good few untruths there along the road, which is not helpful”, he added.

Mr Gavin made what would be among his final stops on the campaign trail in Kilkenny in October, and while Deputy Cleere was one of the Fianna Fáil politicians to come out and support the then presidential hopeful that day, he was opposed to his candidacy from the beginning of the race, supporting Mr Kelleher from the outset.

Though the Kilkenny TD declined to explicitly call on the Taoiseach to step down, he hinted that change may be required soon as the party prepares to celebrate a century in existence next year.

“There’s been a huge amount of own goals and there’s an awful lot of distraction at the moment,” Deputy Cleere said in his concluding remarks.

“The party needs to take a step back and decide for itself what direction it wants to go in for the next 100 years and in that context, everything is on the table”.