“I don’t believe that the guidelines were breached but I do accept that they were ambiguous and they were open to interpretation.”
Tánaiste Leo Varadkar has expressed “regret” over attending the 50-person event at the Merrion Hotel on 21 July organised by former minister Katherine Zappone.
However, he also stated that the event was not in breach of the government regulations in place at the time and “probably wasn’t in breach” of the Fáilte Ireland guidelines.
From 5 July, government regulations allowed for 200 people to attend outdoor events. However, it was previously unclear if this meant a person could organise a gathering of up to 200 people.
While the Attorney General has stated the event did not breach regulations, there have been questions as to whether it breached Fáilte Ireland guidelines in place for the hospitality sector.
The CEO of the Restaurants Association of Ireland (RAI) Adrian Cummins said on Thursday that the hospitality sector “didn’t know “ that 200 people were permitted to gather outdoors for social reasons.
Speaking on RTÉ’s Six One News, Varadkar said: “I just want to express my regret at the fact that I attended that event that has led to this controversy.
“I want to say sorry to the hospitality sector in particular. They’re struggling to get open again. It doesn’t help them that guidelines are changing and that they’re unclear at times.
“But I do want to say very clearly and state this very clearly that the event was not in breach of the government regulations in place at the time which allowed for outdoor gatherings of over 200 and probably wasn’t in breach of the Fáilte Ireland guidelines”.
Asked about his use of “probably”, he replied: “They weren’t clear and they have changed twice actually since then. They’ve changed 35 times since the pandemic began and were largely silent on outdoor events.
“It said at the time that you couldn’t book two tables, for example, indoors, but it didn’t say anything about outdoors and that’s one of the reasons why we clarified those guidelines today.”
Varadkar also stated there was no live music at the Merrion event.
Asked about how the hospitality sector was not aware they could host events of this size, he said: “When you’re doing what we’re trying to do now, which is to open in a stepwise safe pattern, there will be anomalies and there will be inconsistencies.
“There were outdoor events and there have been outdoor events happening around the country for many weeks now. That regulation was published. It was reported, including by RTÉ.
“Where the difficulty arose is – is a hospitality setting a garden of a hotel.
“I don’t believe that the guidelines were breached but I do accept that they were ambiguous and they were open to interpretation.
“That’s what we sought to clarify this week”.
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