Journalist Aoife Moore has opened up about “burning bridges” after breaking the Golfgate scandal.
Golfgate saw 82 people, including politicians and a Supreme Court Judge, attend a two-day event organised by the Oireachtas Golf Society, in the height of one of Ireland’s Covid-19 lockdowns.
Aoife was one of the journalists who broke the Golfgate scandal in The Irish Examiner back in 2020.
View this post on Instagram
Speaking on Doireann Garrihy’s The Laughs Of Your Life podcast, Aoife said: “I had absolutely no idea it was gonna end up in The New York Times.”
The political journalist said that because the Irish public had “nothing else going on,” everyone was “so fuming” when the story leaked.
“There was this kind of feeling that the government didn’t really understand what lockdowns were doing to businesses, especially hospitality, stuff like that. People’s weddings were called off, you know, this was the stage like one person was going to funerals.”
“Old men were not going to their wives’ funerals in case they caught Covid. It was horrible. And then the notion, and I don’t think the fact it was golf helped, but the notion that they had a do while we were all sitting in the house really riled people up, and the fact that it was the Oireachtas Golf Society was the tip of the iceberg.”
View this post on Instagram
“I burned a lot of bridges with Golfgate. There are a lot of people still very angry about it. A lot of very sour grapes. And I had contacts, really good contacts that I lost, and I knew when I was writing that story that I was going to lose them, but that’s the job.”
“There can’t be fear or favour, you have to do it.”
Aoife’s full interview on The Laughs Of Your Life podcast will be released on Monday, October 3.
