Pint-sized O’Dea tackled rugby giant on Shannon

PINT-SIZED Defence Minister Willie O’Dea asked a 6ft 3in former rugby player out to fight after a pub confrontation over Shannon Airport, it was claimed yesterday.

The incident is reported to have happened after Mr O’Dea called to the award-winning South’s bar in Limerick last Saturday night with Tánaiste Brian Cowen.

The people at the centre of the claims, John Fahey, who heads the Meet Limerick/Shannon Conferencing Promotion Group and Shannon-based Aer Lingus workers’ spokeswoman Geraldine Morrissey, yesterday demanded an apology from the minister over his alleged behaviour and remarks.

Mr Fahey went on to suggest that the minister allegedly challenged him out to fight.

A former president of Garryowen rugby club, Mr Fahey continued: “I told him if he was a bit taller, I’d gladly take up his offer to go outside.

“My wife is still very upset at Mr O’Dea. When I went home I wrote it all down, so I’d have a clear record of what happened. He lost it completely.”

Mr Fahey, who was a leading hotelier in the mid-west, said he was with his wife and Ms Morrissey when the alleged incident occurred.

He said: “We went to South’s after a meal. Mr O’Dea was there with the Tánaiste. Then they both left together. As they did so a number of people said ‘what about Shannon, what about Shannon’. They left and Mr O’Dea returned. He was ‘working’ the tables talking to customers.”

Mr Fahey said that when Mr O’Dea approached their group, Ms Morrissey challenged him over not being in the Dáil for the Shannon vote.

He said: “She asked him why he did not take part in the Dáil debate. He said he was the Minister for Defence, and I said ‘you did not defend the interests of Shannon very well’. At that he turned around and said ‘who is that big p***k’, and asked me out, saying he would like to hit me. I told him if he was any bigger I might. He then turned to Geraldine Morrissey and said ‘I don’t give a f**k about you’.

“I could not believe it and it is not good enough. I am in the tourism promotion business, and if that is the kind of government representative we have going abroad on our behalf, I don’t know where are we going. I feel very strongly that he should apologise. We were shattered.”

Ms Morrissey said she was stunned at Mr O’Dea’s behaviour, which she described as horrible.

She said: “He said to me ‘I don’t give a f**k about you’, into my face and my face was only about five inches from him. I couldn’t believe it. He offered John Fahey out to fight and said he would love to hit him... It was totally uncalled for.

“John’s wife Kathleen was very upset and ashen-faced. Mr O’Dea should apologise. This is not acceptable from a public representative or from anybody for that matter.”

Mr O’Dea, meanwhile, has insisted the allegations are rubbish, and claims he returned to the pub to collect his wife and was “roundly abused”.

Patrons in the pub, he said, had asked him to explain himself. The minister said that as he tried to talk, Mr Fahey interrupted him and Ms Morrissey had stated: “Let him make his petty point”.

Mr O’Dea did admit, however, that he told Ms Morrisey to “get lost”.