In very very brief. Katherine Zappone is a lying filth bag who should be....
I'll start over. Katherine Zappone is a former TD who helped work towards marriage equality and the repealing the 8th amendment. Genuinely great work that she should be commended for.
However, she is probably better remembered for lieing about how far she lived from leinster House in order to inflate her travel expenses essentially stealing €80,000 of taxpayer money because she's scum.
After losing her seat in 2020 she moved back to America to volunteer with Biden's election campaign. While living in America her former colleagues decided that she was the perfect person to fill the role of Special Envoy to the UN for Freedom of Opinion and Expression, an important position that has existed in Ireland since last week when it was invented for her. The position comes with a 15k salary for just 50-60 days work, so somewhere between 1750 and 2100 per week (plus travel expenses, christ).
It was discovered that she was chosen for this position without it ever being advertised or opened for people to apply for. And even the Taoiseach wasn't aware that the Tanaiste and Minister for foreign affairs had just made up this position and gifted it to a former colleague. A former colleague who just a week earlier had held a 50 person event attended by Varadkar and Coveney to lobby for the position. Of course his response was "Ah, sure grand." because he knows his coalition partners can pull the plug on his government anytime they want and his party will likely come in with a single digit percentage of the votes if an election was called.
Which is where the other side of the controversy comes in. The AG has since had to come out and say that this event was permissable during our current lockdown rules, a fact that literally nobody in the country was aware of as communions and confirmations have been continously postponed due to restrictions on gatherings. Prompting the church to go "fuck it, we're doing it." All less than a year after "Golfgate" because our government really fucking can't follow lockdown regulations.
www.thejournal.ie
I'll start over. Katherine Zappone is a former TD who helped work towards marriage equality and the repealing the 8th amendment. Genuinely great work that she should be commended for.
However, she is probably better remembered for lieing about how far she lived from leinster House in order to inflate her travel expenses essentially stealing €80,000 of taxpayer money because she's scum.
After losing her seat in 2020 she moved back to America to volunteer with Biden's election campaign. While living in America her former colleagues decided that she was the perfect person to fill the role of Special Envoy to the UN for Freedom of Opinion and Expression, an important position that has existed in Ireland since last week when it was invented for her. The position comes with a 15k salary for just 50-60 days work, so somewhere between 1750 and 2100 per week (plus travel expenses, christ).
It was discovered that she was chosen for this position without it ever being advertised or opened for people to apply for. And even the Taoiseach wasn't aware that the Tanaiste and Minister for foreign affairs had just made up this position and gifted it to a former colleague. A former colleague who just a week earlier had held a 50 person event attended by Varadkar and Coveney to lobby for the position. Of course his response was "Ah, sure grand." because he knows his coalition partners can pull the plug on his government anytime they want and his party will likely come in with a single digit percentage of the votes if an election was called.
Which is where the other side of the controversy comes in. The AG has since had to come out and say that this event was permissable during our current lockdown rules, a fact that literally nobody in the country was aware of as communions and confirmations have been continously postponed due to restrictions on gatherings. Prompting the church to go "fuck it, we're doing it." All less than a year after "Golfgate" because our government really fucking can't follow lockdown regulations.
The Zappone Saga: How the controversy played out in the past week, and why she had to quit
It started with one tweet a week ago – and ended with an extraordinary intervention by the Attorney General.
