The Social Democrats have “taken a knock and deservedly so” by the controversy surrounding Eoin Hayes, according to the party’s deputy leader Cian O’Callaghan, who could not say if the suspended TD has a route back into the party in the future.
Mr Hayes was suspended by the party on Tuesday after he admitted he divested shares in Palantir Technologies, a company which supplied military technology to Israel in July this year, a month after being elected to be a member of Dublin City Council. The Dublin Bay South TD had previously said he had sold the shares before becoming a public representative.
At a press conference on Wednesday evening Mr O’Callaghan said his party had unanimously agreed to suspend Mr Hayes’ membership of the parliamentary party. “At all times” information given to the media, the public “and to ourselves should be accurate”, he said, adding “that’s why that decision was taken”.
Mr O’Callaghan said that his party only learned the exact the dates that Mr Hayes had divested the shares on Tuesday after journalists had been quizzing him on the matter. “It was at that point it was clear that the information he had given to us was not correct,” Mr O’Callaghan said.
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Attempts to contact Mr Hayes for comment were unsuccessful.
Mr O’Callaghan said the party was due to hold a meeting of its national executive on Wednesday night “so we can review all of the issues related to and leading up to our decision yesterday”.
Asked by reporters if there was any route back into the party for the Dublin Bay South TD, Mr O’Callaghan replied: “We’re not at the point now in terms of knowing what will happen in the future.”
He said the party has “made mistakes” and is committed to learning from them, and it has “taken a knock and deservedly so”.
Mr O’Callaghan also said the Social Democrats got a “very strong mandate” in the election, and people wanted it to act on issues like housing, healthcare, childcare, disability services and climate action “so that’s what we’re focused on, and that’s what we continue to be focused on”.
Earlier, the party’s Dublin Central TD Gary Gannon apologised for a claim he made in a podcast that some journalists who asked questions about Mr Hayes’s shares were only doing so because they were interested in getting jobs as government special advisers.
“There are a couple of journalists who recognise there are special adviser jobs coming up. In other jobs you put out CVs. For these jobs you put front pages out,” he said on the podcast, which was recorded before Mr Hayes’ admission.
On Wednesday Mr Gannon said he wished to retract what he had said. “It was a poor comment for me to make, and I apologise to journalists for having said it.”
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