As the fallout from Golfgate rumbles on, listeners to Liveline have been very vocal with their outrage over the perceived flouting of pandemic restrictions by politicians, judges and broadcasters at the now-infamous Oireachtas Society Golf Outing in Clifden, Co Galway last week. On Wednesday's programme, Brenda told Katie Hannon that she was staying in the K Club in Co Kildare earlier this month when she went for some quiet time to the hotel's library. 

"I went down around the lounging rooms of the K Club and went into the library with my book to sit down and read and who was in the library only Phil Hogan, with another gentleman, conducting some sort of a meeting." 

The EU Commissioner, Katie reminded us, had been released from hospital that same day, after a medical procedure. While in hospital, he had tested negative for Covid-19. The timeline relating to Hogan's travels around the country has left us all, in Katie's words, "addled". But, Brenda maintained, him being in the library of the K Club on 6 August doesn't gel with what has been understood to date: 

"His original timeline was, he had left the K Club on the 5 August, where he went to Dublin for a medical appointment and then he stated that he went to Kilkenny to convalesce for the rest of his quarantine." 

This version of the timeline doesn't match up with the fact that Brenda saw Hogan in the library of the K Club on 6 August. There have been, at this stage, by Katie's reckoning, "eight different versions and clarifications and updates, in terms of where Phil Hogan was and when he was there". So, when Brenda heard that his timeline had Hogan leaving the K Club on August 5th, she knew something was amiss. And not only that, but Brenda – and this is something that a lot of Liveline listeners have been saying since the story broke – maintains that she has been trying to abide by the rules during the pandemic, while it seems that some others think that the rules don’t apply to them. 

"I wouldn't put anyone else knowingly in danger and now he's saying he didn't either. But he was [walking] freely around the hotel. He has a residence there, he could have held his meeting in his residence, rather than in the public domain." 

Brenda went on to say that she's heard so often that we're all in the same boat, but she doesn't believe that's true. 

"We're all in the same storm, we're not all in the same boat." 

A pretty succinct summary of the huge effect that Golfgate has had on Irish society over the last week. You can hear Brenda's full chat with Katie – as well as other listeners' take on the whole affair – here. 

Niall Ó Sioradáin