{"id":109630,"date":"2025-10-08T20:58:09","date_gmt":"2025-10-08T20:58:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/109630\/"},"modified":"2025-10-08T20:58:09","modified_gmt":"2025-10-08T20:58:09","slug":"catherine-connolly-broke-rules-over-former-eirigi-member-says-minister-for-justice-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/109630\/","title":{"rendered":"Catherine Connolly \u2018broke rules\u2019 over former Eirig\u00ed member, says Minister for Justice \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Presidential candidate<\/a> Catherine Connolly<\/a> broke Oireachtas rules to grant Leinster House access to a woman unvetted by garda\u00ed who had been jailed for firearms offences by the Special Criminal Court<\/a>, Minister for Justice Jim O\u2019Callaghan<\/a> has said.<\/p>\n

He accused Ms Connolly of making claims about how she employed Ursula N\u00ed Shionnain<\/a> that have been clearly contradicted by Se\u00e1n \u00d3 Feargha\u00edl, who was Ceann Comhairle at the time.<\/p>\n

Mr O\u2019Callaghan said the controversy around Ms N\u00ed Shionnain did not relate to someone with previous convictions undertaking that work but rather it was about Ms Connolly breaking the rules and not submitting Ms N\u00ed Shionnain to Garda vetting immediately.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe all believe in rehabilitation,\u201d Mr O\u2019Callaghan said on Wednesday. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe issue here was providing access to Leinster House to an individual who hadn\u2019t been vetted. And, in those circumstances, I think Catherine should have ensured that there was proper vetting done, as opposed to using a daily pass for the individual coming in.\u201d<\/p>\n

He added that Mr \u00d3 Feargha\u00edl\u2019s account of what happened had clearly set out \u201cwhat the breach of those rules was\u201d. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe can put in place a whole series of rules, but you\u2019re dependent upon members agreeing to the rules … if they\u2019re not followed there can be very negative consequences from that. There were rules in place and they weren\u2019t followed and I don\u2019t think that\u2019s acceptable.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ms Connolly has previously said Ms N\u00ed Shionnain had \u201cfilled out her application form from day one\u201d in 2018 to work for her in Leinster House but left after about six months because the vetting process took so long. <\/p>\n

However, Mr \u00d3 Feargha\u00edl, now a Fianna F\u00e1il TD, told The Irish Times Ms N\u00ed Shionnain had to be asked to undergo the official process for new personnel and, after being asked to do so, soon left.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe presented herself more or less on a day-by-day visitor basis,\u201d he said. \u201cWhen it became obvious that she was there on an ongoing basis, she was asked would she submit to the normal kind of certification process for employees. Before that happened, she left of her own volition.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ms N\u00ed Shionnain went to work for Ms Connolly very soon after being released from prison. She was sentenced to six years in jail in 2014 by the Special Criminal Court, which hears the trials of subversives and the most serious gangland criminals.<\/p>\n

A prominent member of the socialist republican party \u00c9irig\u00ed<\/a>, Ms N\u00ed Shionnain and three men had been arrested in 2012 by garda\u00ed outside a firearms dealer\u2019s premises in Tullamore, Co Offaly. She served a total of 4\u00bd years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Presidential candidate Catherine Connolly broke Oireachtas rules to grant Leinster House access to a woman unvetted by garda\u00ed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":109631,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[9,10,1921,18,13,14,6,19,17,26735,11,12,15,16,5,59,7,8],"class_list":{"0":"post-109630","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-catherine-connolly","11":"tag-eire","12":"tag-featured-news","13":"tag-featurednews","14":"tag-headlines","15":"tag-ie","16":"tag-ireland","17":"tag-jim-ocallaghan","18":"tag-latest-news","19":"tag-latestnews","20":"tag-main-news","21":"tag-mainnews","22":"tag-news","23":"tag-presidential-election","24":"tag-top-stories","25":"tag-topstories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109630","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=109630"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109630\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/109631"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=109630"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=109630"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=109630"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}