The embattled European trade commissioner Phil Hogan is facing fresh accusations that he flouted coronavirus regulations during a golfing break in Ireland.
Hogan attempted to douse the controversy and save his job in a media interview on Tuesday evening, but ended up tacitly admitting he had violated quarantine rules, triggering more questions and calls for his resignation.
Earlier on Tuesday he published a timeline of his movements in Ireland from 31 July to 22 August and gave around 20 pages of documents with additional details to the commission president, Ursula von der Leyen.
She is under pressure to sack Hogan, an Irish political veteran who moved to Brussels and is the EU’s key figure in Brexit talks, but doing so would set an awkward precedent.
The row erupted after it emerged Hogan joined more than 8o people, including politicians and a supreme court judge, at a golfing dinner in Clifden, county Galway, on 19 August.
The event breached Covid-19 regulations and prompted a public outcry that continues to swell. Several attendees resigned from their positions, including Dara Calleary, the government’s agriculture minister. Police are investigating the event.
Hogan apologised, saying the gathering was wrong and he should not have attended, but he has refused to resign, insisting he respected regulations during the rest of his three-week visit to Ireland. Drip-drip disclosures, however, have undermined that claim.
In Tuesday’s interview – his first since the affair broke – Hogan told RTE he had made big mistakes and was very embarrassed, but again insisted he had broken no rules.
He said he had arrived in Ireland on 31 July and travelled to his temporary residence in county Kildare before being admitted on 5 August to a Dublin hospital, where he tested negative for Covid-19 before being discharged on 7 August.
He returned to Kildare, which was under lockdown because of a surge in infections, and over the next two weeks visited counties Limerick, Roscommon, Kilkenny and Galway before returning to Brussels.
“I am satisfied arising from the test that I did that proved it was negative that I was no risk to anybody,” Hogan said.
Told by RTE’s interviewer, Tony Connolly, that as a traveller from Belgium, a high risk country, rules state he should have remained in self-isolation even after a negative test, Hogan said: “Well I don’t accept that.”
The department of health later confirmed that a person must restrict their movements for 14 days if they travel from a country not on Ireland’s green list. Belgium is not on it.
Last week a commission spokesman claimed Hogan had completed his quarantine in Kilkenny. That unravelled when the police notified the government that a Garda stopped and cautioned Hogan for using his mobile phone while driving in Kildare.
Hogan told RTE he was exempt from Kildare’s lockdown restrictions because of essential work negotiating tariff reductions with the US, and he had needed to collect handwritten notes at his residence.
Asked whether this was an effort to mask a golfing holiday, Hogan said he was able to organise his outings to make sure he had time to work in the evenings.
The leaders of Ireland’s three ruling parties, Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Greens, issued a statement welcoming Hogan’s apology but said it was clear he had breached public health guidelines: “People are correctly angered by these actions given the sacrifices so many have made to adhere to public health guidance. In addition, his delayed and hesitant release of information has undermined public confidence.”
Sinn Féin, Ireland’s main opposition party, called for Hogan to be sacked.
