Fianna Fail seeks legal advice as row over Dail speaking rights rumbles on

Fianna Fail has sought legal advice over a row about speaking rights in the Dail, as the stalemate over the issue continues.

Taoiseach Micheal Martin said talks to try to resolve the situation will continue but added that a lot of “simplistic utterances” have been made about the contentious issue.

He said that his party has commissioned senior counsel opinion on the matter.

It comes as a member of the Dail reform committee, which is attempting to resolve the issue, said they have “gone backwards” in trying to reach an agreement.

Government and opposition parties remain at odds over speaking rights, with attempts to find an agreement becoming fraught.

Central to the row was a move to allocate opposition speaking time to some independents who had been involved in government formation talks.

Four of those independents had joined a technical group, which is a mechanism designed to allow opposition TDs to sit in groupings to gain an allocation of speaking time.

A virtual meeting of the Dail reform committee on Thursday night ended with no resolution. The committee are holding meetings on Friday.

Speaking during a break of the meeting, People Before Profit TD Paul Murphy said he wanted a meeting between Government and opposition party leaders.

“Our position is that this is completely and 100% unacceptable, it has no basis to work on. We are probably as far as we are going to get, which isn’t too far,” Mr Murphy said on Friday.

“At this stage we need a reconvening of the meeting of the party leaders and group co-coordinators, as that is where the agreement originated from, which said they would recognise the difference between Government and opposition, and would work to ensure it is worked out with the support of everyone in Government and opposition.

“We need to go back to see if actually a solution can be found.

“Hopefully (Government) will agree to having those meetings over the weekend and then the Dail reform committee can reconvene on Tuesday.

“The truth is we have gone backwards. The proposal they currently tabled is even worse than the proposal that they tabled last night.

“It is an opposition technical group called something different.”

Asked whether he believe it will 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.

“For example, the confidence supply agreement between the Fianna Fail and Fine Gael from 2016 to 2020, if what Sinn Fein is saying and People Before Profit are saying that you can’t be in opposition and support government or be involved in discussions around the programme for government or budget, we would not have had confidence and supply.

“That programme for government was influenced by the main opposition party, the budgets were influenced by the two-to-one rule about two times expenditure versus tax relief.

“Into the future, we’ve got to be careful not to be overly prescriptive about what a Dail might do, or members of the Dail might do.

“I think, an attempt is to unearth what has been practice.”

He said that the Dail Standing Orders allow the group to be formed.

“It’s far more, I would argue, subtle and nuanced, and a bit more complex than all of the argumentation and commentary that we’ve had over the last while. That’s my opinion,” Mr Martin told reporters in Cork on Friday.

“We will still work to get a compromise. We’ll work very hard to do that because we want the Dail to work in an orderly manner. But I think fundamental principles have to be upheld as well and cannot be jettisoned in the interests of what I might consider short-term political goals.”

Deputy leader of the Social Democrats, Cian O’Callaghan, said that Fianna Fail and Fine Gael need to stop “dancing to the tune of Michael Lowry”.

“The entire proposal being put forward really, where government backbench TDs, which masquerade not just as members of the opposition, but the latest proposals we saw this week, effectively be masquerading as leaders of the opposition, is utterly preposterous, totally unacceptable.

“It will never fly, not alone with opposition, I think with the general public as well, who have not been impressed by this carry-on, especially when there’s very serious issues facing the country that we should be all focusing on.

“We did want to see the Dail sitting this week, and really disappointed the Government wouldn’t agree to that.

“To get this resolved, outright, Taoiseach Micheal Martin, the Tanaiste Simon Harris, they should really cut all ties with Michael Lowry.

“They shouldn’t be carrying on with these arrangements.”