Brian Cowen was 'not drunk' on radio interview, retiring Morning Ireland presenter insists

After the interview Fine Gael opposition spokesman, Simon Coveney, put out a tweet suggesting the then-Taoiseach was drunk starting a storm of speculation which was soon called "garglegate".

The incident added to the embattled Taoiseach’s woes and hastened the fall of his Coalition government.

"God, what an uninspiring interview by Taoiseach this morning. He sounded half way between drunk and hungover and totally disinterested..." the Cork South-Central TD tweeted at the time.

The incident occurred in September 2010 when Brian Cowen was attending a party pre-Dáil Fianna Fáil seminar in a Galway hotel.

Mr MacCoille, who had his last day as presenter of the flagship early morning news programme 'Morning Ireland' today, has finally commented on it in an interview with the online Irish language magazine Tuarisc.ie.

Mr MacCoille recalls being in the company of Mr Cowen and then-Gaeltacht Minister, Pat Carey, in the hotel bar around 1am that night.  Mr Carey said he was going to bed but Mr Cowen said he would have one or two drinks because he had had a very long day.

The presenter said he was not satisfied with the interview Mr Cowen later did with him after 8am.

“He was evasive and things were really bad in the country. He did himself no favours, he was evading questions about the economic crisis which was coming,” the RTÉ presenter said.

“The controversy began when Simon Coveney put the question ‘was he drunk or tired?’  - but he was not drunk,” Mr MacCoille insisted.

The presenter said his own view was that Mr Cowen, whose government was floundering amid a major recession, was “weary.”

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The veteran RTÉ presenter said he returned to the same hotel in Galway a year later while attending a funeral. He got a taxi back to the railway station and the taxi driver said he had been in that hotel the night before the notorious interview.

The taximan said “yer man” was “jarred” and “legless.”  For Mr MacCoille the taximan’s tale told him people often prefer rumour to truth.

Mr MacCoille said the use of social media was the biggest change he had seen in a long career in journalism. There were advantages to this but there were also big risks of wrong reporting being accepted as fact.

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