Sinn Féin to consider ‘all options’ if Government presses ahead with speaking row plan

By David Young, PA

Mary Lou McDonald has not ruled out a Dáil walkout by Sinn Féin if there is no resolution to the row over speaking time allocated to independent TDs who support the Government.

The Sinn Féin president branded the Government’s proposed compromise to the stand-off as “Alice in Wonderland stuff” as she made clear her party would stand its ground.

Efforts to appoint Micheál Martin as taoiseach two weeks ago were delayed by a day after opposition parties disrupted proceedings in protest over the speaking time dispute.

Nine independent TDs support the Fianna Fáil-Fine Gael government – seven from the Regional Independent Group and two Co Kerry brothers Michael and Danny Healy-Rae. Five of the nine are ministers of state.

The other four independents, including Michael Lowry who led the regional group in the programme for government negotiations with the two coalition parties, want to be part of a Dail technical group, which would give them speaking slots during opposition time.

Opposition parties have argued this would dilute efforts to hold ministers to account.

The Government has proposed a “hybrid” technical group in the Dáil that would allow its members to either support the coalition or not.

Ms McDonald described the suggested solution as a “nonsense”, “farce” and an “insult to democracy”.

She made clear she would not accept any arrangement that would allow Mr Lowry to ask questions during Leaders’ Questions – the three times weekly exchanges when opposition leaders traditionally ask questions of the taoiseach and tanaiste.

Asked if she would countenance a walkout of the Dail on Wednesday if the Government pressed ahead with its proposal, the Sinn Féin president said the opposition parties would “consider every single option available to us”.

She told RTÉ Radio One’s This Week programme: “We find ourselves in a very serious situation where Micheal Martin and (Tanaiste) Simon Harris are prepared it seems to turn logic, reality and democracy on its head, all to meet the demands, it seems, of Michael Lowry and his group of independents.

“It’s been made very clear to Micheal Martin, to Simon Harris that this cannot stand. In fact, we met as a combined opposition at leadership level to set that out, to press the fact that there can be a solution.”

Ms McDonald said a resolution had to acknowledge the “reality” that the independent TDs who participated in the programme for government negotiations were “part and parcel” of the coalition.

“Their speaking time to which they are entitled should therefore logically come from government time,” she said.

“And if they wish to form a new grouping on the Government benches, we have indicated clearly that we are open to that, that’s the solution.

“But what we will not have is any attempt to pretend that you can be in government and in opposition at the same time.

“For some people who might think that this is just some dry technical argument, it really isn’t, this goes to the heart of how we do our business on behalf of the Irish people.

"They’re entitled to a government, a good government, ideally, and they are also entitled to a democracy that can only function where you have a clear and strong opposition that is not encroached upon in a very, very cynical way by government deputies.”

Ms McDonald said: “We are simply not prepared to be pushed around by this government, to have logic and reality turned upside down.

“This is Alice in Wonderland stuff. We’re not prepared to allow the democratic function of the opposition to be undermined at the very beginning of this new Dáil. We will stand our ground and we will consider all and every options.”

While insisting the opposition would countenance all options, Ms McDonald said they would first seek a meeting with Mr Martin and Mr Harris in a bid to resolve the row before it escalated further.

On Friday, Mr Martin said his Fianna Fail party had commissioned senior legal counsel opinion on the matter.

Asked whether he believed it would be resolved, Mr Martin said: “I would hope so. We will keep talking. We want to try and resolve this.

“Could I say at the outset, I think there’s been a lot of, I think, simplistic utterances about this entire situation.

“Our party has commissioned senior counsel opinion on this just to create a context because there’s a notion going around that opposition and government, you can’t be in either, that’s far too simplistic because go back to 1932 and from then onwards, people from opposition benches have been supporting different governments in different ways.”