O'Dea says 'too early to plan for cabinet comeback'

FORMER MINISTER for Defence Willie O’Dea has said it is too early to plan for a cabinet comeback.

Mr O’Dea who resigned his post on Thursday amid allegations that he had sworn a false affidavit said he had paid “a huge price” financially and politically “for one slip” and was obviously “shattered” by the experience.

He said he would be taking some time over the coming weeks to deal with the practicalities of going from “being a minister to being an ordinary citizen or being an ordinary TD.

“There are a certain amount of practicalities you have to deal with and my mind is occupied in dealing with them at the moment so when those are out of the way I’ll consider the future then,” he said.

Asked how he felt he replied: “Well I feel shattered obviously. My ministerial career that I fought very hard to get, I have been many, many years as an apprentice as it were, has come to a juddering halt.”

Mr O’Dea repeated his assertion that Taoiseach Brian Cowen had told him the Greens would pull out of Government if he remained in office.

He said he was concerned that the Green Party position had changed from one of support on Thursday to opposition on Friday. He said “no material facts, no new facts to my detriment, emerged in that time so I don’t know what the basis of the change was.”

But Mr O’Dea said the economic problems facing the country were such that it was “in the national interest” that he resign to protect the work of the Government.

In an interview with the editor of the Sunday Independent, Aengus Fanning, Mr O’Dea declined to comment on whether the Green Party members felt they were being pushed about by Fianna Fáil and wanted to pass a “virility test”.

Instead, Mr O’Dea blamed “lower ranks of Fine Gael” and “certain elements of the media” for his downfall.

He said it was not Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny, at least initially, or members of his front bench, “but certain people in the lower ranks of Fine Gael who were obviously people like Senator Eugene Regan who parasited on Bertie Ahern’s difficulty towards the end of his career and decided that he saw me in difficulty now, and would parasite on that, all to presumably raise his own profile – you know he may be raising his own profile but it is certainly not the type of profile that I would like to have”, he said.

Asked whom he would blame in the media Mr O’Dea said he “couldn’t help but notice that The Irish Times seems to have taken a particular line on this.” He declined an invitation to speculate on whether this was because he was a columnist with the Sunday Independent.

Sinn Fein councillor Maurice Quinlivan last night refused to comment on a Sunday newspaper report that he was paid €100,000 in damages by Mr O’Dea. Mr Quinlivan said“The Minister made a financial settlement with me which I was happy with. He described that as substantial, make of that what you wish,”.

“He also discharged my full legal costs..