Willie O'Dea affidavit incident

The Willie O'Dea affidavit incident or Brothelgate was a 2010 political controversy in Ireland surrounding Minister for Defence Willie O'Dea.

Enda Kenny, leader of main opposition party Fine Gael, accused O'Dea of having committed perjury after it emerged remarks which he had sworn under an affidavit not to have said had in fact been said. The remarks related to the alleged connection between a brothel and Sinn Féin councillor Maurice Quinlivan. These allegations were later proven to be untrue. O'Dea and Quinlivan had settled High Court damages over the incident in December 2009. However, increasing parliamentary pressure in February 2010 propelled the affair back into the spotlight. O'Dea resigned as Minister for Defence on 18 February 2010, with Taoiseach Brian Cowen assigning himself temporary responsibility for the Department of Defence.

Stephen Collins, writing in The Irish Times, suggested "Relations between the Coalition partners [Fianna Fáil and the Green Party] may never be the same again after the resignation of Willie O'Dea". According to the Evening Herald, the departure of O'Dea was "the first major casualty of the coalition government". The same newspaper noted that the resignation of O'Dea was the third in two "absolutely calamitous" weeks, following the unexpected departures of George Lee and Déirdre de Búrca from Fine Gael and the Green Party respectively.

On 12 January 2009, three Brazilian women were arrested in an apartment in Limerick city. They were charged the following day with brothel-keeping. The three received suspended sentences of six months each and were ordered to leave Limerick city within three days. The apartment had been rented out to them by Nessan Quinlivan, a former Provisional IRA volunteer and the brother of Sinn Féin candidate for Limerick City Council Maurice Quinlivan. During the court hearing there was no mention of Quinlivan being the landlord and there was no suggestion that he knew a brothel was being kept at the apartment. The Garda Síochána stated in the court hearing that the women were "pawns" of a larger operation.

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