Ex-Clare TD Violet Anne Wynne's debt won't be paid off until 2028, court hears

Gordon Deegan

It will not be until 2028 before former independent Clare TD, Violet Anne Wynne, has paid off a residual debt to an ex-employee from an €11,500 Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) award, a court has heard

At Ennis District Court on Friday, solicitor Daragh Hassett said that payments continue to be made to his client, Fiona Smyth, by Wynne.

The amount outstanding from Wynne to Smyth now totals €4,700 and is being paid off at a rate of €50 per week.

The case was listed for Judge Adrian Harris to monitor payments by Wynne.

Hassett told Judge Harris: “By and large, the payments are being made though there is the odd week where the payment is doubled up where there wasn’t a payment the week before.

Hassett said: “At this rate, it will be into 2028 before the balance is paid. The court order is for payments of €50 per week.”

Hassett said that it was open to Wynne to pay more per week.

In court last July, Judge Alec Gabbett directed that Wynne pay €50 per week to Smyth in order to pay off a then residual €6,500 debt to her former constituency office worker from the €11,500 WRC award made against Wynne.

In August 2024, the WRC ordered Wynne to pay the €11,500 after finding that Smyth was unfairly dismissed by Wynne.

Wynne - who received a TD’s annual salary of €113,679 - lost her seat in the November 2024 general election in Clare receiving only 310 first preference votes where she stood as an independent candidate in a vote collapse from her 2020 general election vote when she topped the poll as a Sinn Féin candidate.

When the case was last before court in September, mother of six, Wynne said that “it is not a case I was making payments whenever I felt like it. I was doing so with whatever little income that I had to hand.”

Wynne told Judge Gabbett in September that now she was in receipt of a weekly payment herself where she could now pay the €50 per week owed to Ms Smyth.

Asked what weekly payment she now receives, Wynne told the court last September that it was €565 per week.

Solicitor for Smyth, Daragh Hassett told the court last September that the Oireachtas has confirmed to him that the termination payment that would have been available to Wynne on losing her seat would have been €18,946.50.

Wynne confirmed that she did receive the €18,946 termination payment and paid out €5,000 of that to Smyth earlier in 2025.

Asked by Judge Gabbett what happened to the then remaining €13,000 or so, Wynne said: "This was the only income I had from the time the general election was called last November until a tax back payment I have received.”

In court on Friday, Judge Harris adjourned the case to October 9th for further monitoring of the payments to be made by Wynne.

Hassett told Judge Harris that he would inform Wynne of the adjourned court date.