‘Crude remark’ minister should be dismissed

A CLARE couple have called for the resignation or dismissal from Cabinet of Environment Minister Phil Hogan following his utterance of what they describe as “a crude, sexual remark.”
Anne O’Connell and her partner, Máirtín Mac Cormaic, who live in Moy, near Lahinch, have also expressed anger about the minister’s subsequent apology, which they say was “founded on a lie”.
Anne O’Connell worked as private secretary to John Bruton when he was Fine Gael leader and Máirtín Mac Cormaic is a political columnist for The Clare Champion, as well as being a former political reporter with Independent Newspapers.
They attended an Oireachtas golf outing in Connemara last August where they encountered Mr Hogan.
Ms O’Connell remarked she hoped he wouldn’t ‘screw’ property owners in upcoming legislation. Allegedly, Minister Hogan responded, “I have no problem screwing you. Hasn’t Máirtín been screwing you for years”. He is then said to have turned his back on the couple.
While Ms O’Connell subsequently received a hand-written apology from Mr Hogan, this has only further angered the couple.
Ms O’Connell has also written two letters of complaint to Taoiseach Enda Kenny; the first elicited an acknowledgement but she is still awaiting a reply to the second.
In another letter to Mr Hogan, Mr Mac Cormaic said, “I am sorry that I feel compelled to complain to you about outrageous and highly offensive remarks you made to my partner, Anne O’Connell…  This was a degrading, insulting and abusive remark that left me shattered and in shock. I could hardly believe my ears that anybody – not least a Government minister – would make such an offensive remark in public.” 
Efforts to contact Minister Hogan at both as his department and constituency offices on Wednesday proved unsuccessful.
However, in a letter to Ms O’Connell, which was reproduced in last weekend’s Sunday Independent, the Minister stated, “I unreservedly apologise for those remarks which were totally inappropriate in a personal sense to you and Máirtín.”

Mr Hogan also stated that his comments were “intended in a jocose and private basis and certainly not intended as insulting, particularly as I know both of you very well for 24 years.”
“My apologies for any personal injury caused, regards, Phil,” the letter concluded.
Both Ms O’Connell and Mr Mac Cormaic say the remarks were made within earshot of others and that neither of them was ever particularly friendly with the minister.
They accused him of trying to portray the matter as a piece of banter among friends; something they say was certainly not the case.
Speaking to The Clare Champion on Wednesday, Ms O’Connell was still very angry.
“I have strong feelings about it and what upsets me more than anything is that he was disingenuous in pretending he was doing it out of knowledge and friendship. I wasn’t on that level with him for a start.
“I knew him in the Dáil the same as I knew every other TD when I worked there, but we weren’t in jovial company, we weren’t together having a bit of banter.
“This was a dismissal in public. I do have a sense of humour and I can take a bit of fun and jest, but to pretend it was done as a joke – it was done as a dismissal 100%.”
She said she doesn’t feel his behaviour was becoming of a senior figure in the Cabinet.
“I don’t think he’s fit for office. I don’t know of anyone else I met in my time in Leinster House to ever have done that to anybody, back benchers or otherwise. I don’t know of anybody who could come along and say that, least of all a Government minister.
“The fact that I worked in the Dáil makes no difference, no citizen should be subjected to that.”
The apology from Mr Hogan was very inadequate, she claimed. “His apology is founded on a lie. It’s thrown out as if it was in a jocose manner with me, because of his knowledge of me for years. That is not correct. It was not done in that manner. It was dismissive. That was not the basis on which he said it.”
She said she would like to know what female ministers such as Joan Burton and Frances Fitzgerald make of Mr Hogan’s remarks to her.
Ms O’Connell said she was so traumatised that she couldn’t go out on the night of the incident.
Mr Hogan resigned his position as a junior minister in 1995 after budget details were leaked, but Mr Mac Cormaic said the current matter is more serious.
“There is far more reason for him to resign or be sacked now.
“That was a very minor thing and this could be interpreted as alleging that Anne has loose morals. If he told her ‘f**k off and don’t be bothering me’, it wouldn’t be as bad. But it was a dreadful thing to say to a person, particularly a woman.”
Like his partner, the apology carried little weight with him.
“If you libel someone in the newspaper you apologise fairly fast but that’s never enough. It might ameliorate whatever happens after but it’s not enough to apologise.
“It was an apology that was dragged out of him and that meant nothing, it was just to cover himself.”
He also said that there was no friendship between the couple and Mr Hogan.
“What he’s trying to portray there is friends in private having a bit of banter. There was nothing like that. It was a total dismissal and an insulting, lewd dismissal.”
Mr Mac Cormaic said that he had never been close to Mr Hogan.
“If I was a friend of his I’d have had the odd cup of coffee or a pint with him, but I never had, not that I remember anyway.”
He said he had been very upset by the minister and “was so embarrassed by the whole incident I just wished that we were miles away from where we were. I was simply mortified.”
He said some people feel he should have taken the law into his own hands.
“Friends have told me I should have clobbered the minister. But I am at a stage of life when the last thing I want is confrontation of this kind.”