His travels were undertaken the year after he was co-opted onto the council to replace his father, Christy Sr, who was elected as a Fianna F\u00e1il TD for Cork South West after serving until 2007 as an Independent county councillor.<\/p>\n
Mr O\u2019Sullivan Jr previously said he told his constituents in Skibbereen he was going travelling and they did not mind, but there is no public record of this.<\/p>\n
He said all payments he received \u2014 including allowances and expenses \u2014 were in full compliance with the law.<\/p>\n
![\"Then](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/4746279_10_articleinline_DENIS_20county_208_1_.jpg\" "\\"Then")
Then councillor Christopher O’Sullivan at Cork County Hall on his election as county mayor in 2019. He was since elected TD for Cork South-West in 2020 and 2024, and named as a junior minister earlier this year. File picture: Denis Minihane<\/p>\n
\u201cAny allowances or payments over 2008 [were] in full compliance with the laws and regulations then in force, including the Local Government Act 2001,\u201d he said. \u201cMy absence whilst travelling in the New Zealand, Australia and [the] South America region was under a continuous period of six consecutive months.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cork County Council has said the Local Government Act, 2001, provides \u2014 under Section 18(4)(a) \u2014 that \u201ca person shall be deemed to have resigned from membership of a local authority, where the person is absent from attendance at any meeting of the authority for a continuous period of six consecutive months from the relevant date of their last attendance at a meeting of the local authority\u201d.<\/p>\n
However, while an elected member must attend at least 80% of meetings to receive the full allowances, the act also allows for absences of up to 18 months due to \u201cillness, or, in good faith, for another reason\u201d.<\/p>\n
Council records show Mr O\u2019Sullivan had the lowest attendance rate of all its councillors in 2008, attending 26 out of 70 meetings.<\/p>\n
Despite this, he claimed travel expenses of \u20ac4,083, monthly allowances of \u20ac8,985, and his representational payment of \u20ac17,179.<\/p>\n
While his attendance stood at just 37%, he claimed more in 2008 than four other councillors who had higher attendance records.<\/p>\n
When details of general low attendance records emerged in August 2008, the then Fine Gael leader on the council, Michael Hegarty, was reported as saying:\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n If you can\u2019t attend meetings, you can\u2019t do the job properly and somebody else should be co-opted in your place.\u00a0\n <\/p>\n
Several Fianna F\u00e1il party members have privately said they did not know Mr O\u2019Sullivan had gone travelling in 2008.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is complete news to me to discover that despite him not being around for so long in his own constituency, he actually received the money he got,\u201d a member said.<\/p>\n
“Far be it from me to tell anybody what they should do, but I think a donation to a local charity might be an appropriate thing to do,” the member said.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Irish Examiner asked Mr O\u2019Sullivan a series of questions, including how long he travelled abroad, how he served his constituents while abroad in 2008, and how he told constituents about his travelling.<\/p>\n
He said: \u201cI was co-opted as an Independent councillor in June 2007, joining the Fianna F\u00e1il party in 2009.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was subsequently re-elected post the local area elections in June 2009.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“Any allowances or payments over 2008 [were] in full compliance with the laws and regulations then in force. My absence whilst travelling was under a continuous period of six consecutive months.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am privileged and remain grateful to my constituents to be elected a TD in 2020 and again in 2024 and to be appointed a minister of state in 2025, representing the people of Cork South-West and serving nationally.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe issue was dealt with in full 17 years ago.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A junior minister has said he broke no rules by receiving \u20ac30,000 in payments from Cork County Council…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6584,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[781,6756,9,10,18,13,14,6,19,17,11,12,15,16,5,7,8],"class_list":{"0":"post-6583","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-cork-news","9":"tag-local-elections","10":"tag-breaking-news","11":"tag-breakingnews","12":"tag-eire","13":"tag-featured-news","14":"tag-featurednews","15":"tag-headlines","16":"tag-ie","17":"tag-ireland","18":"tag-latest-news","19":"tag-latestnews","20":"tag-main-news","21":"tag-mainnews","22":"tag-news","23":"tag-top-stories","24":"tag-topstories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6583","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=6583"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6583\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6584"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}