Three of the four remaining sabbatical officers in University College Dublin Students’ Union (UCDSU) will take annual leave from tomorrow and campaign for the impeachment of Katie Ascough, President of UCDSU.
The union’s Education Officer, Robert Sweeney, and Graduate Officer Niall Torris, along with the acting President and Campaigns and Communication Officer, Barry Murphy, will take a day off tomorrow so that they can be part of the campaign to impeach Ascough. In a statement to The University Times, the three officers said that they are taking the annual leave with the support of Welfare Officer Eoghan MacDomhnaill.
The last-minute intervention is highly significant in a campaign that has at times seemed surreal. Ascough has repeatedly claimed that her decision was for the good of UCDSU and its leaders. Tonight, the three sabbatical officers – Ascough’s closest union colleagues – firmly contradicted that.
The three announced their decision tonight at UCDSU Council. Murphy, in a statement to The University Times, said the decision was not part of a “bullying campaign” – an accusation towards her opponents that has been a mainstay of Ascough’s campaign.
Sabbatical officers cannot campaign for either side unless they take annual leave and do so in a personal capacity.
“This is not because Katie is pro-life it is due to her failure as a leader to both ourselves and the student body”, Murphy said. She has, he said “repeatedly gone against a strong mandate our Union holds (a vote by the student body) to fight to Repeal the 8th Amendment, in our entirety”.
In an open letter, seen by The University Times, he challenges numerous claims made by Ascough during the last few weeks and points to various instances where she impeded the union’s pro-choice campaign.
In it, he said he has “always respected Katie for her views, more so than most. Her passion on her difference of opinion is admirable and no debate happens without differences. I condemn anyone who would abuse her for her views alone”.
The reason for impeaching Ascough is “we are all elected to uphold all SU mandates regardless of our personal opinions of them”.
The open letter is full of contradictions to claims Ascough made during the campaign, offering a step by step rebuke of key aspects of Ascough’s campaign. When discussions broke down between the sabbatical officers over publishing information about abortion “Katie claimed it wouldn’t be a big deal and that ‘students wouldn’t care or notice’”, according to Murphy.
Murphy explained that “it has since been raised that the current information is still illegal anyway”, but that Ascough “did not seek legal advice before sending the book to reprint”. Murphy went on to question her decision, which was based on the illegality of the information: “This prompts the question was she really concerned about the legal issue in the first place?”
In the letter, Murphy said that the “majority” of Ascough’s campaign material “consists of lies”.
“She takes credit for things she had no involvement in and claims to have been the lead in things that were clearly team efforts”, he said.
In a video published last night, Ascough claimed that she increased the union’s budget for repealing the eighth amendment campaign willingly. However, Murphy said that he “experienced forceful manipulation this summer” to reduce the budget.
“The same week Varadkar had committed to a May or June referendum in 2018 and so (as Katie had suggested) I felt justified in increasing my spend on the National Referendum repeal campaign (by €500)”, but Ascough then asked him to “reduce it back down”. It was only because Ascough “ran out of time to decrease it”, Murphy said, that the campaign didn’t face a cut.
Murphy’s claims run as far as stating Ascough was firmly aware of the illegal content of Winging It before it was printed. Ascough has claimed that she was unaware that the information in the guide was illegal until after it was first printed. But, Murphy says, the sabbatical officers were “given a talk during our crossover training” discussing how the union “had distributed the illegal information in the previous year’s Winging It edition” and that Ascough “was present at this talk”. “We also received the same talk during our election campaigns, as candidates”, Murphy added.
The cost of the guide’s reprint was €8,000 to the union. However, Ascough claimed that the cost to each individual who handed out a book would be fined €4,000. On this, Murphy discredited her claim, saying that class representatives had not been elected yet “so to say dozens of people could’ve been sued is ridiculous”, and that the risk of being fined was minimal.
Murphy said that he appealed to Ascough, asking her to “put out a statement “acknowledging regret” that she made a decision made off legal advice that upset so many students and that we were working on our delegation process”, but that Ascough could not grasp “why students were angry, certain she had done nothing wrong” and refused to issue a statement.
Murphy went on to call Ascough out, claiming she has used her anti-impeachment campaign “to launch herself onto a National stage”. “Our audience is UCD students and sending a nationwide press release only serves to further her own personal platform”, he said. He claimed that “being a national spokesperson for the pro-life campaign is an ambition of Katie’s and she is using this to achieve her aims”.
“It’s embarrassing to watch”, added Murphy.
Murphy concludes the letter: “Katie Ascough is a seasoned campaigner and she has been trained for years, campaigning against Marriage Equality, Abortion Information Access and a Woman’s Right to Choose. She presented a falsity to the electorate last March in her campaign promise of delegation and “stepping out of the room” when abortion is being discussed. She has done the complete opposite. Do not let her fool you this time. Your student voice is at stake.”
This saga erupted last month when Ascough decided to remove information on abortion from the Winging It Freshers’ guide. This garnered anger and disappointment from her fellow sabbatical officers, with MacDomhnaill calling the removal of the information “bullshit”.
The impeachment campaign against Ascough has triggered national and international headlines, with alt-right news outlet Breitbart covering the story. The fractious campaign comes less than a year after UCDSU voted to retain a pro-choice stance, while only months before Ireland is due to vote on the repeal of the eighth amendment.
