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SINN FÉIN TD Jonathan O’Brien has said the Labour backbencher Eric Byrne has not apologised to him over remarks made in the Dáil last week about his brother.
O’Brien said today that he didn’t expect Byrne to apologise to him, but claimed that ordinary Labour members had emailed him to distance themselves from the comments and in some cases said they would be complaining to Labour HQ about Byrne.
Byrne declined to comment this afternoon.
During heated exchanges in the Dáil last week O’Brien revealed that his brother, who is a recovering drug addict, is homeless and had been forced to go into a hostel where drug use was happening.
This prompted Byrne to ask why “does his [O'Brien's] good family not take him home?” A visibly angry O’Brien replied “shut your mouth”, prompting several angry exchanges among backbenchers.
Speaking at Leinster House today, O’Brien said he wasn’t bothered whether or not Byrne apologised to him.
“I’ve said what I said about Eric. I think Eric’s comments showed his own ignorance in relation to the issue of addiction and homelessness and he needs to reflect on that himself,” he said.
He said he did not expect the Dublin South-Central TD to apologise to him and added: ”I’m sure I’ll see him in the chamber later and maybe he;ll put his head down and walk past.”
O’Brien, a TD for Cork North-Central, went on to claim that members of the Labour party had contacted him over the weekend to “totally distance themselves from Eric Byrne’s comments” .
“Some of them have even gone as far as to say they’re going to make an official complaint to Labour party headquarters, asking that he would withdraw the comments and issue an apology to myself, to my brother and to every other family out there who are going through the same issue of addiction and homeless,” he said.
He said that those who had been in touch with him were “with the grassroots” of the party.
Contacted for comment today, Byrne said he would not be saying anything more about the issue.
“I will not be making any further comments on this matter as I believe that Deputy O’Brien’s brother is entitled to privacy at this time,” Byrne told TheJournal.ie in a text message.
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Fortune favours the brave
Legend.
Here’s some even better advice for young journalists.
Go back to college and get a proper degree. Your field is dying. Nobody pays for journalism any more. If you do get a job, it will be for some kind of clickbait-oriented online rag that publishes nonsense most of the time. There are massive skills shortages in IT and Engineering. Go there and you will get paid!
Machines like IBM’s Watson are already capable of secondary journalism that we find here. It won’t be long before all journalists are replaced by machines.
That is all.
Journalism and engineering/IT are worlds apart. If you picked your college course purely based off which one is most likely to get you a job you’d have a hard time passing it due to lack of interest.
If you didn’t consider whether there would be a job you just wasted 4 years.
But then again, you could always just choose gender studies and make a career out of criticising tech companies for not doing enough to attract women to the field you didn’t choose because you thought it would be boring.
@amanda how about an interview with an next gen journalist??
#keeptypingtillyouwritesomething #generationmillennials
Real piece of advice:
Become journalists who investigate, who are not afraid to go against the tide of mainstream policy fashions, who shine a spotlight on the policies of government, in short, people who question multicultism, mass immigration and the EU population replacement engineering programme. Instead of opting for hackism and pravdaesque state/EU cheerleading. As it is you do not engage in journalism but pro multicult mass-immigration stage managed hackism. Cowardly consensus screedists.
Was he widely respected by the women he broke the ribs of while off his head?
Do you have a better source than that? I tend not to automatically believe everything I read on the internet.
Its all in his book.
RIP old stock
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