RETIRING FIANNA FAIL TD Ned O’Keeffe has said that the situation in Ireland has become so bad that an army coup is a “real possibility”.
The comments have been published in today’s Cork Evening Echo. He stood by the comments when contacted by TheJournal.ie.
O’Keeffe also told the paper that he had been correct in his prediction about the country’s financial woes.
He has previously been an outspoken critic of Taoiseach Brian Cowen and said that both Cowen and Finance Minister Brian Lenihan had made such big mistakes that it could lead to a military intervention in Ireland:
Our political system is going to fail further. The two Brians have made a right mess of the country and I see the real possibility of an army coup.
People thought I was mad with all the things I have predicted through the years, but I foresaw the economy collapsing due to lax regulation on building housing estates and unwanted shopping centres.
When contacted by TheJournal.ie this afternoon O’Keeffe was not immediately aware of the comments that he made but said he stood by them:
I said what I said and that’s it. I said it because of the state of the economy.
The country is in crisis and the Fine Gael manifesto is totally going to destroy the country.
It’s not the first time O’Keeffe, a former junior agriculture minister, has been outspoken with his views. In 1995, he called for the film ‘Babe’ to be banned because it could harm Christmas ham sales.
Last month, in his last address to the Dáil, he claimed that Fianna Fail had become the “party of the racehorse owner”.
The Cork East TD is stepping down after 29 years in the Dáil. His son Kevin is running for the seat.
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