De Burca: I was promised Brussels job

Former Green Senator Deirdre de Burca has claimed the Greens only agreed to support Maire Geoghegan Quinn as Ireland's EU Commissioner in return for Miss de Burca getting a job in the Commissioner's cabinet.

In a statement on her website, de Burca says Fianna Fáil failed to live up to the deal once Geoghegan Quinn was installed as Commissioner.

De Burca said Environment Minister John Gormley told her he had negotiated a position for a Green in Maire Geoghegan Quinn's new cabinet as a condition for Green support for Mrs Geoghegan Quinn's nomination, and that a role for de Burca was discussed last November.

The former Senator said the Greens favoured Pat Cox for the Commissioner's job, but agreed to a Fianna Fáil nomination as long as a Green was included in the Commissioner's cabinet.

In a statement on her website she says a senior Fianna Fáil Minister stopped her in Leinster House in recent weeks and informed her the Brussels job had been offered to another person.

She says she asked John Gormley to force Fianna Fáil to honour the deal, "but he told me that he was powerless to do so".

She was instead offered the job of Chef de Cabinet in the European Court of Auditors, but says she turned it down as she did not believe she was qualified for the job.

"I made it clear to the Green Party and Fianna Fáil that I was not looking for a 'plum' and well-paid job in Brussels but rather that I genuinely want to make a serious contribution to ensuring that the European Union leads the way internationally towards a more sustainable and responsible way of living on the planet," she said in her statement today.