INDEPENDENT PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE Dana Rosemary Scallon has said she will “step out” of the campaign if details about her relationship with other members of her family is “dragged across” the campaign.
Scallon this morning told RTÉ’s Today with Pat Kenny that she found it “really disgusting” that details of a legal dispute between members of her family was being discussed in the press and on national airwaves.
“It was a court case – a very turbulent and hard time for me and my family. We worked our way through it and we’re trying to patch up my family. My family is more important to me than this presidential election.
“I don’t want any more questions about it,” Scallon asserted.
Details of the legal dispute within Scallon’s family first emerged in the Irish Times last week, when it published details of a legal dispute in the United States in 2008.
In that case, Scallon’s sister had told the court that a decision had been made not to inform the electorate about her dual US-Irish citizenship ahead of her first run for the Presidency in 1997.
Scallon presented Kenny with the document which granted her US citizenship, which affirmed that her citizenship was granted on October 8, 1999 – two years after that election.
Kenny affirmed that the document carried a disclaimer which forbade its photocopying or publication without prior legal authority, but asked Scallon why she had not presented the document earlier.
“I did not anticipate that a newspaper as reputable as the [Irish] Times would delve into a family matter and spread it across two inside pages and a front page… I do not keep this [US document] in my pocket, I had to search for it,” she said.
“I am not answering any more questions,” she said. “I applied for [American] citizenship when I went there. I went there in 1991. I will not have my family dragged across this presidential election, or else I will step out of it.”
Scallon also affirmed that she would give up her US citizenship if asked or demanded to do so in the course of her presidency.
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