Will report take all the fizz from champers celebration?

Has the fizz died on Champagne-gate? This week the secretary general of the Department of Foreign Affairs, Joe Hackett, reported on his review of a spontaneous gathering organised by his predecessor, Niall Burgess. It happened in June 2020 on the night that Ireland was elected to the United National Security Council.

The Department in Dublin and at the UN headquarters in New York had put in a huge effort for a few years to win the prestigious spot – and pulled it off against the odds.

Cue the spontaneous celebration and the champagne and the lack of social distancing in Iveagh House (it was actually sparkling wine).

Cue the infamous Tweet from Niall Burgess that was hastily deleted.

I was actually covering the story that night and was in Government Buildings for the press conference given by Simon Coveney and then-Taoiseach Leo Varadkar. I did not see the tweet that night; nor was it reported at the time even though Burgess apologised the next day.

As public controversies go, it is a headscratcher. It took 18 months for it to become a front -page story after intrepid freelance journalist Darragh McDonagh got his hands on a screenshot of the tweet – by which time Burgess had finished his stint at the head of the department and was now ambassador to Paris.

If the tweet had been picked up by the media the next day and reported on, it would have caused some ripples – but nothing like the wave it created 18 months afterwards.

Because by that time, people were looking at the Tweet through the prism of December 2021, rather than June 2020.

Golfgate had happened; the second and third lockdowns; thousands had died. And there was a big live controversy, across the water over informal parties taking place inside and outside 10 Downing Street.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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