{"id":110539,"date":"2025-10-09T06:34:06","date_gmt":"2025-10-09T06:34:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/110539\/"},"modified":"2025-10-09T06:34:06","modified_gmt":"2025-10-09T06:34:06","slug":"catherine-connolly-spent-e3700-from-taxpayer-funded-allowance-on-syria-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/110539\/","title":{"rendered":"Catherine Connolly spent \u20ac3,700 from taxpayer-funded allowance on \u2018Syria\u2019 \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Presidential candidate Catherine Connolly <\/a>used a taxpayer-funded allowance for \u20ac3,691 in spending described as related to \u201cSyria\u201d in her statement to the Standards in Public Office Commission <\/a>(Sipo) for the year 2018. <\/p>\n

The spending under the Parliamentary Activities Allowance (PAA) was declared for the same year as she travelled to the war-torn country with then-fellow TDs Clare Daly<\/a>, Mick Wallace <\/a>and Maureen O\u2019Sullivan.<\/p>\n

At the time of the trip, dictator Bashar al-Assad<\/a> was still in power and engaged in a brutal civil war. The country was under western sanctions.<\/p>\n

Ms Connolly has previously said it was a \u201cfact-finding\u201d trip.<\/p>\n

When she was asked in July who funded the visit to Syria, Ms Connolly replied: \u201cI funded that trip.\u201d<\/p>\n

The PAA is a taxpayer-funded allowance available to political party leaders and Independent TDs in relation to expenses arising from parliamentary activities, including research. <\/p>\n

The sum on offer to all Independent TDs in 2018 was just over \u20ac37,000. Unspent sums can be carried forward into later years.<\/p>\n

Ms Connolly\u2019s statement, filed with Sipo, regarding PAA expenditure for 2018, states that she spent a total of \u20ac35,639 that year. All of it came under the heading of \u201cexpenditure on research and training\u201d.<\/p>\n

This includes an entry listed as \u201cSyria\u201d and a corresponding figure of \u20ac3,691.72 in spending.<\/p>\n

The Irish Times asked Ms Connolly\u2019s campaign for a full breakdown of what this sum was spent on. The campaign team did not respond to attempts to contact them by phone, text and email on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

During her campaign launch in July, she said the purpose of the trip was \u201cfact-finding\u201d, that she \u201cmet no member of government\u201d and did not ever \u201cutter one word of support for Assad\u201d.<\/p>\n

She said the delegation visited a refugee camp outside Damascus and \u201csaw first-hand the destruction of a whole city\u201d. They travelled to Aleppo and met the chamber of industry, had a meeting with Unicef workers and visited a convent.<\/p>\n

While in Aleppo, the Irish delegation met Syrian businessman and politician Fares al-Shehabi.<\/p>\n

Although he was an independent MP, Mr al-Shehabi was a supporter of the military actions taken by the government side in the civil war. He was deemed a supporter of the Assad regime and placed under European Union sanctions.<\/p>\n

In one incident, Mr al-Shehabi posted on social media about a seven-year-old girl (who had been posting online about the war and criticising the regime) saying: \u201cDear world, it\u2019s better this little witch die before she starts, with her sponsors, WW3!\u201d<\/p>\n

During an RT\u00c9 Radio interview at the end of August Ms Connolly was asked about the Irish delegation meeting with Mr al-Shehabi.<\/p>\n

Catherine Connolly has refused to be drawn on whether she represented financial institutions in repossession cases as a barrister. Video: Jack Horgan-Jones. <\/p>\n

She said: \u201cI had absolutely no respect for that man after listening to him for the duration that I listened to him. He was the head of the chamber of commerce. There was community activists with us and that man was put under serious pressure in relation to questions. Were we happy with the answers? Absolutely not.\u201d<\/p>\n

Asked whether, in hindsight, she thought it was a mistake to meet Mr al-Shehabi, Ms Connolly replied: \u201cCertainly in retrospect, when one looks back and sees the comments that he made and you see them, absolutely, this man is utterly unacceptable to me.\u201d<\/p>\n

During the interview, Ms Connolly said she has \u201cnever, ever hesitated in my utter condemnation of Assad publicly and privately\u201d.<\/p>\n

She said the trip to Syria \u201cempowered me, enabled me and made me stronger as a voice for peace and to use our voice at every level in every situation to abhor what\u2019s going on\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Presidential candidate Catherine Connolly used a taxpayer-funded allowance for \u20ac3,691 in spending described as related to \u201cSyria\u201d in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":110540,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[9,10,1921,27170,13,14,6,11,12,15,16,24699,5,59,15516,7,8,65,66,67],"class_list":{"0":"post-110539","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-catherine-connolly","11":"tag-clare-daly","12":"tag-featured-news","13":"tag-featurednews","14":"tag-headlines","15":"tag-latest-news","16":"tag-latestnews","17":"tag-main-news","18":"tag-mainnews","19":"tag-mick-wallace","20":"tag-news","21":"tag-presidential-election","22":"tag-syria","23":"tag-top-stories","24":"tag-topstories","25":"tag-world","26":"tag-world-news","27":"tag-worldnews"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110539","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=110539"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110539\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/110540"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=110539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=110539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=110539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}