Jack & Jill charity founder Jonathan Irwin says the Government has abandoned former Irish Olympic Council president Pat Hickey.
On hearing that a Brazilian court has ruled Mr Hickey is to get back his passport, Mr Irwin tweeted: “So pleased my old pal Pat Hickey has got his passport back - no thanks to Shane Ross or Minister Flanagan.”
On the Today with Sean O’Rourke show he said that when he first met Mr Hickey “he treated me like I was a beetle to be crushed under foot, but we got to know each other.
“I know that people have their feelings about him, but first of all the way in which he was arrested and treated - he was meant to be almost an ambassador, a VIP in Brazil. It was an extraordinary way.
“He was hardly going to run away, but there he was, naked and dragged off to prison.
‘Hate fest’
“Then the sort of hate fest that started over here in the media for quite a long time - as if this was the devil incarnate.
“As a human being I was always taught to stand up when I think things are wrong and I think the way he has been treated is wrong.
“I couldn’t believe that Shane Ross, our Minister of Sport, gets on a plane and leaves our top administrator under arrest without going back.
“My great hero was always Lord Palmerston, who if an English citizen or passport holder got into trouble, by god he sent a gun boat out and said we’re taking none of this nonsense.
“Obviously the man has to face the charges when they eventually come to court - but to just leave him abandoned was unbelievable.
“It doesn’t have to be Pat Hickey, anybody to be just abandoned. The Olympic Council itself wasn’t enormously helpful to him.
“But to abandon any human being in a foreign country with a legal system that is so very different to ours and seems to be even slower - how can you treat a human being like this?
“Whether you like him or you don’t, he has achieved more than any Irish sports administrator.”
When asked what else were diplomats to do apart from visiting him in jail, he said: “Get him out of there.”
“I feel equally strongly about that poor boy in Egypt [a reference to Ibrahim Halawa]. He’s been lingering there without trial.
“Why do we give people passports? Because we’re there when they’re in trouble, and Hickey is on the world stage of sport. He’s very high up on the international council.
‘Vilified in the press’
“He created the European games last year and he’s just vilified in the press and abandoned by the Government.
“There are charges against him... but he didn’t kill anybody. Surely it’s humane to give the man at his age his passport back, he comes back to Ireland.
When asked if he thought Hickey would go back to Brazil, he said no. “I imagine that the World Olympic council would look after one of their captains, I would hope.
“Pat wouldn’t have anything like that [money] - or his family - so unless the International Olympic Council stumps up for him I wouldn’t know what is going to happen.”