{"id":111566,"date":"2025-10-09T16:56:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-09T16:56:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/111566\/"},"modified":"2025-10-09T16:56:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-09T16:56:08","slug":"catherine-connolly-rejects-suggestion-of-misleading-statement-on-syria-trip-funding-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/111566\/","title":{"rendered":"Catherine Connolly rejects suggestion of misleading statement on Syria trip funding \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Presidential election candidate Catherine Connolly<\/a> has said she never gave the impression that she used her own personal funds to pay for a trip to warn-torn Syria in 2018.<\/p>\n

This is despite saying at her campaign launch last July: \u201cI funded that trip.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Irish Times reported<\/a> on Thursday that Ms Connolly used a taxpayer-funded allowance for spending of almost \u20ac3,700 related to Syria<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The spending was included in her statement of expenditure for the Parliamentary Activities Allowance (PAA) for 2018 which was filed with the Standards in Public Office Commission (Sipo). <\/p>\n

After failing to respond to questions on the matter on Wednesday, Ms Connolly confirmed, after the publication of The Irish Times story on Thursday, that she used the taxpayer funded PAA for the trip. <\/p>\n

She went to Syria, at a time when brutal dictator Bashar al-Assad was still in power and engaged in a civil war, as part of an Irish delegation that also included then fellow Independent TDs Clare Daly<\/a>, Mick Wallace<\/a> and Maureen O\u2019Sullivan.<\/p>\n

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

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

At a press conference while campaigning in Rathfarnham, Dublin on Thursday, Ms Connolly was asked why she said in July that she funded the trip herself. <\/p>\n

Ms Connolly said: \u201cThat\u2019s exactly what I did, out of my parliamentary PAA allowance. That\u2019s exactly what I did.\u201d<\/p>\n

Put to her that the impression given was that she had used personal funds, she replied: \u201cI never gave that impression, that\u2019s an allowance that\u2019s given to every single independent TD. There are a number of different categories, and I tend to use it under policy and research, and that\u2019s exactly what I did.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ms Connolly said her use of the PAA \u201chas always been on the record, and everything complied with, it\u2019s audited by an independent auditor and it goes back to Sipo.\u201d<\/p>\n

Asked if her comment in July, that she had funded the trip, was misleading, she said: \u201cI was asked a question and I answered the question\u201d.<\/p>\n

Ms Connolly\u2019s campaign did not respond to a request for a full breakdown of what the \u20ac3,691 sum related to Syria in her 2018 PAA expenditure statement was spent on, when initially approached by The Irish Times on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

The campaign team did not respond to attempts to contact them by phone, text and email that day. <\/p>\n

Also on Wednesday, Ms Connolly told reporters she had \u201cno difficulty as a candidate with scrutiny and accountability\u201d, adding that \u201cquestions should be posed and answered\u201d. <\/p>\n

However, on Thursday morning her campaign released a statement confirming she used a portion of the PAA under the \u201cResearch\u201d heading \u201cto support a fact-finding visit to Syria\u201d.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Catherine Connolly \u2018broke rules\u2019 over former Eirig\u00ed member, says Minister for JusticeOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

The total declared amount was \u20ac3,691, as set out in her Sipo return, the campaign said. <\/p>\n

\u201cThis expenditure was made for research purposes: to gather first-hand information relevant to Catherine\u2019s parliamentary work on foreign policy, humanitarian issues, sanctions, Irish neutrality and Ireland\u2019s role in international institutions. Costs covered standard travel and subsistence. No personal benefit accrued.\u201d<\/p>\n

The statement continued: \u201cEngagement with people and organisations on the ground in conflict settings is part of responsible parliamentary research. Such engagement does not imply endorsement of any government, faction or policy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ms Connolly has previously 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

[\u00a0Songs and jokes for Catherine Connolly at presidential fundraiserOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/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), writing: \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

\u201cI had absolutely no respect for that man after listening to him for the duration that I listened to him,\u201d she said. \u201cHe 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 election candidate Catherine Connolly has said she never gave the impression that she used her own personal…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":111567,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[27169,9,10,1921,18,13,14,6,555,19,17,11,12,15,16,5,59,69289,15516,7,8],"class_list":{"0":"post-111566","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-bashar-al-assad","9":"tag-breaking-news","10":"tag-breakingnews","11":"tag-catherine-connolly","12":"tag-eire","13":"tag-featured-news","14":"tag-featurednews","15":"tag-headlines","16":"tag-heather-humphreys","17":"tag-ie","18":"tag-ireland","19":"tag-latest-news","20":"tag-latestnews","21":"tag-main-news","22":"tag-mainnews","23":"tag-news","24":"tag-presidential-election","25":"tag-standards-in-public-office-commission-sipo","26":"tag-syria","27":"tag-top-stories","28":"tag-topstories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111566","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=111566"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111566\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/111567"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=111566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=111566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=111566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}