Swings and roundabouts: Kilkenny TD says party had ‘no option’ but to drop compo claim colleague Maria Bailey

Minister John Paul Phelan said Fine Gael had “no other option” but to remove controversial swing compo case TD Maria Bailey as a General Election candidate.

The Kilkenny TD is a member of the Fine Gael National Executive that made the decision to de-select Deputy Bailey as a candidate for the party in the wake of the ‘swing-gate’ controversy.

Deputy Phelan (pictured below) told KCLR that on “a personal level you couldn’t but feel sorry for her family and herself,” particularly in light of her father’s recent death.

But he added: “She made a catastrophic error of judgement in terms of the claim that was submitted and in that sense there was perhaps no other alternative.”