The former tenant owed money by Fianna Fáil presidential nominee Jim Gavin has said he feels sorry for his ex-landlord.
Niall Donald, deputy editor of the Sunday World, has spoken publicly for the first time about his claim that he is owed €3,300 by the former candidate, who has ended his campaign over the controversy.
The revelation about the overpaid rent was disclosed last Saturday in the Irish Independent, which along with the Sunday World is part of the Mediahuis media group. It led to Mr Gavin ending his campaign on Sunday night.
For the past number of days, media reports on the controversy did not identify Mr Donald, who spoke to reporters on the basis his name would not be used.
On the latest episode of the Crime Matters podcast, which he co-hosts, Mr Donald said he believed there could have been a “better outcome” if Mr Gavin’s handlers had taken a different approach to the issue.
“Does the punishment fit the crime? Probably not. I kind of feel sorry for him that he wasn’t handled better,” he said.
On Wednesday, a solicitor acting for Mr Gavin said, following the release of the podcast, that he had contacted Mr Donald and explained to him he had been instructed to repay him the €3,300 “subject to clarifying two issues”.
The journalist told how he mistakenly allowed direct debits to continue from his bank account to Mr Gavin’s bank account in the months after he ended his tenancy of a Dublin apartment in 2009.
[ In an ideal world Jim Gavin would have been running someone else’s campaignOpens in new window ]
Despite repeated requests to Mr Gavin for the repayment of €3,300 in overpaid rent, the debt remains outstanding.
In 2010, Mr Donald engaged a solicitor to write a letter to Mr Gavin demanding the return of the money and threatening legal action.
As he did not have Mr Gavin’s home address, he said he sent the letter to the apartment and to his then workplace: the Air Corps base in Baldonnel, Co Dublin.
He said he also delivered a copy in an envelope, marked private and confidential, to Mr Gavin’s parents at their home and asked them to pass it on to their son.
“I said: ‘I’m really sorry to call to your house. I’m a former tenant of Jim’s. I’m just looking to get a letter to him.’ They were really, really nice,” said Mr Donald.
However, some hours later, after midnight, he received a call from Mr Gavin, who, he said, was “really, really irate” about Mr Donald calling to his parents’ home.
“Ultimately, he calmed down,” the journalist said. “He accepted he owed me the money. He said: ‘I’m transferring it now.’”
But the money never arrived, Mr Donald told his podcast co-host, Nicola Tallant.
Legal proceedings were not taken because of the costs involved and eventually, Mr Donald said, he dropped the matter.
Mr Donald said his work with the Sunday World involves him working alongside colleagues from the Irish Independent and that he regularly told the story in the newsroom of how he was owed money by Mr Gavin.
“I’ve been telling this story for years,” he said.
What had happened to him had been hard to forget, he said.
“If you have ever been in those circumstances where you feel you have been ripped off, it gives you this feeling of being powerless,” he said, adding that he was “really struggling financially” at the time.
He said he did not think it was a major story until Mr Gavin was selected by Fianna Fáil as the party’s candidate for the presidential election.
He then felt it was better not to publish it in the Sunday World because of his personal involvement with the matter.
Although a report outlining the unpaid debt was published on Saturday, he said he told the story to Fionnán Sheahan, Ireland editor at Mediahuis, weeks earlier.
The published story focused on Mr Gavin’s financial difficulties in the wake of the property crash.
Mr Donald said it was only then that he learned the former Dublin GAA manager had been in severe financial difficulty at the time of the rent overpayment.
If he had been told by Mr Gavin that he was in financial difficulty and would pay him back when he could, he said he would have said: “No problem, pay me back in time.”
He said he understood that Mr Sheahan first contacted Fianna Fáil about the issue weeks ago.
The published story contained a quote from the party saying Mr Gavin had no recollection of the unpaid debt.
“I found that kind of frustrating because all through those years, I had a recollection of it and I had a bad feeling about it,” said Mr Donald.
The next day he contacted Fianna Fáil and said he was unhappy with what it had said, as it suggested the story was not true.
He told the party he had records relating to the unpaid debt.
In a statement announcing that he was ceasing his campaign on Sunday night, Mr Gavin said: “I made a mistake that was not in keeping with my character and the standards I set myself. I am now taking steps to address the matter.”
Mr Donald said he felt sorry for Mr Gavin when he announced he was ending his campaign.
“People make mistakes,” he said. “It’s a small amount of money in the scheme of things.”
Although he does not feel guilty about the collapse of Mr Gavin’s campaign, he said: “I do kind of think there could have been a better outcome.”
Mr Gavin’s solicitor Eamonn Shannon of Dublin-based law firm Shannon O’Connor told RTÉ in a statement: “We have reached out to Mr Donald and explained to him that we have been instructed to make the payment of €3,300 to him subject to clarifying two issues.
“We await hearing back from Mr Donald and once those two issues are clarified, we can then proceed to close out on the matter.”
The solicitor added: “From Mr Gavin’s initial consideration of the podcast, it is clear there are inaccuracies.”
Mr Shannon did not specify what the inaccuracies were.
Mr Donald confirmed to The Irish Times that he had been contacted by Mr Gavin’s solicitor and that he would respond to him.
The Irish Times was unable to reach Mr Gavin directly on his mobile phone on Wednesday seeking comment but left a message asking whether he wished to respond to Mr Donald’s interview.
[ The Irish Times view on Jim Gavin’s withdrawal: a Fianna Fáil fiascoOpens in new window ]