POLITICAL REACTION:SENATOR IVOR Callely says that he is reviewing his legal options after winning a court battle to overturn the decision of a Seanad committee about his expenses.
The former Fianna Fáil representative could sue Seanad colleagues on the Select Committee on Members’ Interests which fined him and suspended him from the house for 20 days last year.
However, legal sources said such an action was unlikely to succeed, given the High Court has restored Mr Callely’s good name and that the judgment cleared individual members of the committee of the allegation of bias.
Mr Callely, who was not in court, yesterday expressed satisfaction with the judgment of Mr Justice Iarfhlaith O’Neill and said it clearly vindicated his position.
In a statement, his solicitor Timothy O’Hanrahan said Mr Callely, his wife and family had suffered greatly from being placed in the glare of media publicity and were the subject of “adverse, unfair and defamatory comments from some sections of the media”.
The committee will meet its lawyers next Wednesday to decide whether to appeal the judgment to the Supreme Court. Members of the committee yesterday declined to comment on the ruling, saying it was for the group to take a collective stance.
Labour Senator Ivana Bacik, who is not on the committee, described the judgment as disappointing. She said the committee had undertaken a rigorous examination of all the circumstances in the case, and the “consensus view” was that its conclusion was the right one.
The result of the controversy was to drag politics further into disrepute, she said. “There is certainly a great deal of ambiguity surrounding the definition of a member’s ‘normal place of residence’. Allowing a Senator to maintain more than one normal place of residence for the purpose of claiming expenses makes a mockery of the system.”
The members of the committee are Senator Pat Moylan, who is also Seanad Cathaoirleach; Camillus Glynn (FF); Denis O’Donovan (FF); Joe O’Toole (Independent); Alex White (Labour); Frances Fitzgerald (Fine Gael); and Dan Boyle (Greens).
Mr Boyle removed himself from the committee because of previous comments he had made about Mr Callely; he was replaced by Green Party Senator Mark Deary.
