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Three high-ranking ministers and the doctor at the center of the controversy over the leak of GP’s salary deal have disputed an account of the meetings they allegedly participated in last year, published by Village magazine on Monday.
The magazine published a statement on its website, with text messages allegedly from Dr. Maitiú Ó Tuathail, suggesting that he had two meetings over lunch and dinner in June and September last year with Tánaiste Leo Varadkar and the Minister of Finance. Paschal Donohoe.
Separate screenshots, which according to the magazine also come from Dr. Ó Tuathail, allege a meeting between him, Mr. Varadkar and then-health minister Simon Harris after a rugby match in February last year.
The Village magazine statement claimed that it had evidence of up to 10 meetings between Dr. Ó Tuathail and later taoiseach Leo Varadkar.
However, on Monday, the parties to the alleged meetings disputed much of the statement.
In a brief statement on Monday, the Finance Department said: “Minister Donohoe can confirm that none of these alleged meetings took place.” A spokeswoman for Mr. Harris said: “the meeting did not take place.”
A spokesperson for Mr. Varadkar said: “Many of these encounters just didn’t happen. The magazine is wrong again in its facts. We are not going to comment further ”.
Long statement
In a lengthy statement Monday night, Dr. Ó Tuathail did not deny that he sent the text messages, but said: “I do not have access to any of these text messages that were allegedly sent to me as they date from a period in 2019 when he was president of the NAGP “.
He said he could “categorically state” that the Tánaiste was not at one of the meetings that Village claimed to have attended, in a Dublin pub last summer. He said he had only met Donohoe once, at a charity event in June 2019, and that he had never had dinner with the minister.
He said he met with Mr. Harris, who was minister of health at the time, several times in his capacity as chairman of the NAGP, “but I would give the Minister when and where it went, as I no longer have records of these. “
He said he met the taoiseach several times in 2019 “in a personal capacity. I have not kept a record of these, and again I would entrust you to establish when and where. “He said he met with the Tánaiste” a total of three times “in 2020,” as [Leo Varadkar] has previously declared ”.
“I was unaware of the publication of these texts that were supposedly sent by me. What was said above is accurate in fact, ”he said.
The article claims that the evidence for seven of the meetings comes from text messages sent by Dr. Ó Tuathail suggesting that they took place. There are no messages from Mr. Varadkar to corroborate these suggestions.
Supported by a photograph
Another meeting, the magazine says, was mentioned last week by Varadkar in the Dáil, while another is supported by a photograph taken of the two at a festival in June 2019.
A final meeting, the magazine claimed, was backed by corroboration from a son of healthcare entrepreneur and corporate problem solver Chay Bowes. This last meeting is the one that Dr. Ó Tuathail says that Mr. Varadkar “categorically” did not attend.
The messages and the alleged meetings relate to 2019. In last week’s Dáil, Mr. Varadkar said that Dr. Ó Tuathail is the “type of friend that I would meet two or three times a year, probably in a drink reception or overlapping social circles. ” .
In an earlier text message posted last week, Dr. Ó Tuathail stated that he had met Mr. Harris for lunch. Later, Harris told the Dáil that this meeting did not take place.
Michael Smith, editor of Village magazine, said the magazine’s statement “speaks for itself.” It did not clarify whether any of the three ministers referred to in the statement had been contacted for comment before publication.
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