Former justice minister Alan Shatter has not spoken to Taoiseach Enda Kenny since June, in the aftermath of his resignation from ministerial office the previous month.
Mr Shatter was forced out last May following the publication of the Guerin report on whistleblower allegations of garda malpractice which was highly critical of his handling of the matter.
In an interview on the Late Late Show on Friday night, he revealed he has not spoken to Mr Kenny in about three months but denied being "shafted" by him and said there was no antagonism between the two. He also denied feeling "bitter" in the wake of his resignation.
Mr Shatter refused to be drawn on several areas of recent garda controversies, citing both High Court proceedings he has brought challenging the findings of the Guerin report, and the ongoing Fennelly Commission process, established last April to examine covert recording of phone calls in some garda stations between 1980 and 2013.
On Mr Kenny, he said: “We had a conversation in June, our paths haven’t crossed since.” However, he said he did not feel let down by the Taoiseach and would not be critical of him.
Mr Shatter also took the opportunity to say he felt it was a mistake to delete surrogacy from pending legislation on family law, a draft of which he published last January.
Regarding the day of his resignation, he said it was normal practice for a Taoiseach to read a minister’s letter of resignation to the house which he watched from his room. “Of course it wasn’t a pleasant experience. I think anyone in politics who was in the position I was in ... would be disappointed that events turned out that way.”
Mr Shatter was pressed on the subject of the former Garda commissioner Martin Callinan's retirement which was preceded by a visit of the then secretary general of the Department of Justice Brian Purcell to his home in late March, the details of which remain unknown.
Although aware of the meeting between the two, he would not get into the details as it was the subject of the Fennelly Commission investigation, he said.
Addressing a perception he was "tight" with the former commissioner, Mr Shatter explained that it arose following a report in the Sunday Times that the offices of the Garda Síochana Ombudsman Commission (GSOC) believed it had been under surveillance.
“There was an investigation GSOC conducted; they didn’t comply with the law, they failed to inform me as minister either of the initiation of the investigation or of its completion. They effectively covered up what they had been engaged in,” he said.
“The suggestion that I was too close to the garda commissioner arose because following my meeting with the head of GSOC, I made a statement in the Dail that there was no evidence that GSOC had been under surveillance and even less so was there any evidence they had been under surveillance by the guards.”
Mr Shatter said he maintained an interest in legislation still coming through the Dáil and criticised the recent decision to omit surrogacy following an overhaul of family law.
“I don’t want to see some of the advances we are making watered down,” he said. “I was surprised to discover this week that the new Children’s Bill which I published in draft form back in January ...has now been deleted from it all provisions dealing with surrogacy. I think that is a mistake.”
It emerged this week the Government had dropped surrogacy from the part of the Children and Family Relationships Bill which initially set out to ban commercial surrogacy and clarify the rights of children born to a surrogate.
