Catherine Connolly clarifies she would not hire someone on the sex offenders list

Presidential candidate Catherine Connolly: 'I would not be employing someone who is on a sex offenders list. It stands against everything I stand for.'

Independent presidential election candidate Catherine Connolly has been forced to clarify that she would not hire a person on the sex offenders list following criticism from Fine Gael and Heather Humphreys.

It followed Ms Connolly's comments during a Newstalk interview saying she would have to “reflect” when asked if she would hire a rapist to Áras an Uachtaráin.

Fine Gael criticised the comments, with health minister Jennifer Carrol MacNeill stating that “a presidential candidate who employs a person convicted by the Special Criminal Court to work for them in the Oireachtas and to then consider hiring a convicted rapist for the Áras is not fit to be our president”.

During a press conference in Dublin, Ms Humphreys said she would “absolutely not” need to reflect on hiring someone with a rape conviction.

“I just wonder what any woman in this country would think, or what she would feel if she had been a victim of rape, if they thought that somebody who was a convicted rapist could be employed in Áras an Uachtaráin by a possible next president of Ireland,” she said.

Ms Humphreys said she does believe in rehabilitation and believes people “should get a second chance” but argued that there are “different levels of conviction”.

Speaking in Rathfarnham, Ms Connolly clarified and said she would not hire someone on the sex offenders list.

“I’ve spent my whole political life, and actually prior to that, standing up for women and the absolutely appalling figures and the appalling violence against women,” she said. “People know me as that person. I've never changed. The words convicted rapist, someone is convicted in the court. I absolutely respect that.

“It depends how many years they've spent in prison, and if they spent more than two, they're on that sex offenders list for life. Certainly, I wouldn’t be employing someone like that. 

I would not be employing someone who is on a sex offenders list. It stands against everything I stand for.

When asked about Fine Gael’s comments about her, Ms Connolly said the party is in a “very difficult position at the moment” and is “absolutely scared of the momentum that’s behind” her.

Former Fine Gael minister Ivan Yates suggested on the Calling It podcast that Ms Humphreys needed to “smear the bejaysus” out of Ms Connolly, adding, “Do you want a provo in the park?” She branded this “violent language”.

Meanwhile, the Irish Times reported on Thursday that Ms Connolly used a parliamentary allowance to spend €3,691 to go to Syria in 2018.

Ms Connolly said in July that she had funded the trip herself. When questioned on Thursday, she said this was “exactly what she did” and that she funded it “out of my parliamentary allowance”.