Green Party leader Eamon Ryan has insisted that his party adequately dealt with bullying allegations against one of its TDs.
Brian Leddin, the party’s TD for Limerick City, was accused of being a member of a WhatsApp group that used slurs against Limerick councillor Elisa O’Donovan. The story came to light in August 2021.
It was alleged that Mr Leddin called Ms O’Donovan “unhinged” and that she “craved fame”.
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The issue was investigated by the Green Party’s national executive, which decided not to sanction Deputy Leddin.
Mr Ryan said that he was satisfied that the party had dealt with the allegations of bullying and misogyny.
He said: “We've mechanisms, very elaborate mechanisms and very tried and tested mechanisms.
“We treat any allegations very seriously. We’ve a very transparent system internally. I trust our executive, and the mechanisms that our general secretary and the mechanisms they put in place to make sure that we set [and] we maintain our standards and how we treat each other.”
At the Green Party’s 2021 think-in, several weeks after the story about the WhatsApp group emerged, the party declined to answer questions as it was a “legal matter”.
Minister Ryan said at his Christmas briefing for political correspondents that the controversy was not “hidden or ignored or avoided” and that it was a “highly contentious and complex issue”. He insisted that the party received advice not to comment on the issue.
He continued: “No one was disrespecting that woman's [Ms O’Donovan] right to raise a concern or no one was ignoring it.
“There were also legal aspects of this in terms of the complex legal aspects.
“The legal advice I have is that a lot of the commentary was defamatory in nature, in various directions.
“I have to go back into all the complexity of that but that was our advice at the time, correctly in my mind.
“It was complex and very, very different arguments [were] being made.
“Our view and our advice legally then and now is, ‘be very careful in your commentary because potential defamatory comments [were] being made’.”
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