Presidential candidate Catherine Connolly used a taxpayer-funded allowance for €3,691 in spending described as related to “Syria” in her statement to the Standards in Public Office Commission (Sipo) for the year 2018.
The spending under the Parliamentary Activities Allowance (PAA) was declared for the same year as she travelled to the war-torn country with then fellow TDs Clare Daly, Mick Wallace and Maureen O’Sullivan.
At the time of the trip, dictator Bashar al-Assad was still in power and engaged in a brutal civil war. The country was under western sanctions.
Ms Connolly has previously said it was a “fact-finding” trip.
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When she was asked in July who funded the visit to Syria, Ms Connolly replied: “I funded that trip.”
The PAA is a taxpayer-funded allowance available to political party leaders and Independent TDs in relation to expenses arising from parliamentary activities, including research.
The sum on offer to all Independent TDs in 2018 was just over €37,000. Unspent sums can be carried forward into later years.
Ms Connolly’s statement, filed with Sipo, regarding PAA expenditure for 2018, states that she spent a total of €35,639 that year. All of it came under the heading of “expenditure on research and training”.
This includes an entry listed as “Syria” and a corresponding figure of €3,691.72 in spending.
The Irish Times asked Ms Connolly’s campaign for a full breakdown of what this sum was spent on. The campaign team did not respond to attempts to contact them by phone, text and email on Wednesday.
During her campaign launch in July, she said the purpose of the trip was “fact-finding”, that she “met no member of government” and did not ever “utter one word of support for Assad”.
She said the delegation visited a refugee camp outside Damascus and “saw first-hand the destruction of a whole city”. They travelled to Aleppo and met the chamber of industry, had a meeting with Unicef workers and visited a convent.
While in Aleppo, the Irish delegation met Syrian businessman and politician Fares al-Shehabi.
Although he was an independent MP, Mr al-Shehabi was a supporter of the military actions taken by the government side in the civil war. He was deemed a supporter of the Assad regime and placed under European Union sanctions.
In one incident, Mr al-Shehabi posted on social media about a seven-year-old girl (who had been posting online about the war and criticising the regime) saying: “Dear world, it’s better this little witch die before she starts, with her sponsors, WW3!”
During an RTÉ Radio interview at the end of August Ms Connolly was asked about the Irish delegation meeting with Mr al-Shehabi.
She said: “I had absolutely no respect for that man after listening to him for the duration that I listened to him. He was the head of the chamber of commerce. There was community activists with us and that man was put under serious pressure in relation to questions. Were we happy with the answers? Absolutely not.”
Asked whether, in hindsight, she thought it was a mistake to meet Mr al-Shehabi, Ms Connolly replied: “Certainly in retrospect, when one looks back and sees the comments that he made and you see them, absolutely, this man is utterly unacceptable to me.”
During the interview, Ms Connolly said she has “never, ever hesitated in my utter condemnation of Assad publicly and privately”.
She said the trip to Syria “empowered me, enabled me and made me stronger as a voice for peace and to use our voice at every level in every situation to abhor what’s going on”.
