Taoiseach Simon Harris has said the private dinner meeting between Paschal Donohoe and Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary did not fall into the category of lobbying.
On Thursday the Irish Times revealed that in February 2022 a private and previously undisclosed dinner meeting took place at an upmarket Dublin restaurant involving Mr Donohoe and Mr O’Leary.
Mr Donohoe’s spokeswoman said it was a private dinner and that no business matters were discussed, and neither were matters of policy or regulation.
It was not included in his ministerial diary – which his spokeswoman said was “used predominantly to log official events”.
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No lobbying return was made by Ryanair regarding the dinner. The airline said: “Since this was a social setting (in a public place) no lobbying took place and no lobbying return was required or necessary.”
Mr Donohoe was minister for finance and president of the Eurogroup at the time.
On Friday Mr Donohoe insisted it was possible for a person holding those roles to have a purely social meeting with the boss of Europe’s biggest airline.
Mr Harris agreed with this on Saturday.
He said that he does not think that he himself has ever met Mr O’Leary, adding “not that there’s any problems with meeting Michael O’Leary”.
Asked if he had similar private meetings with other executives from multinational companies, Mr Harris said: “I’m not aware of any such dinners that I’ve had.”
He said: “Of course people in this country come into contact with each other in social environments on a very regular basis.
“There are very clear rules, introduced by Fine Gael ... in relation to issues around lobbying and the like and I’m assured that this dinner didn’t fall into that category at all.”
Asked if the dinner meeting between Mr Donohoe and Mr O’Leary was an example of Fine Gael being too close to big business, he said: “My party is proudly pro-enterprise. It’s proudly pro-foreign direct investment and pro-backing small business and there are policies in relation to both that we are putting forward in this election.”
Mr Donohoe has said he and Mr O’Leary discussed “general matters” at the dinner, adding: “if any issue in relation to Government business, regulation or policy had been dealt with that would have been recorded and it would have been dealt with in the same way that every other engagement that I do is dealt with.”
Fine Gael faced a significant political backlash after comments made by Mr O’Leary at the launch of Minister for Enterprise Peter Burke’s campaign just after the general election was called. A video of his remarks that surfaced after the event showed he said he would not employ teachers “to go out and get things done”, saying that the Dáil was “full of teachers”.
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