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The formal nomination of Micheál Martin as Ireland’s new prime minister was hit by chaotic scenes in the Dáil that led to the parliamentary session being suspended several times.
The row, which the speaker failed to control, centred on the speaking rights of independent TDs (members of parliament) who have formally agreed to back a coalition government of the Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael parties to be led by Martin.
The Sinn Féin leader, Mary Lou McDonald, said it “took the biscuit” that the independents would sit on opposition benches, claiming it was a cynical ruse by Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael “to place their independent cronies, supporters of the government, on the opposition benches and to afford them the same speaking rights of the opposition”.
The new speaker, Verona Murphy, initially suspended the Dáil for 15 minutes but upon its return she was forced to suspend it again for more than an hour amid bedlam on opposition benches.
Shortly after 1pm, the time Martin was due to travel across Dublin to Áras an Uachtaráin, the official residence of the Irish president, where Michael D Higgins was to formally appoint him, the Dáil was adjourned for 45 minutes to allow chief whips find a resolution to the row.
One opposition TD, Labour’s Alan Kelly, said he was “embarrassed” by the situation, which he compared to the United Kingdom parliament in recent years. “We looked over at the Houses of Parliament a couple of years ago during Brexit and said, what a laugh, what a shambles. Well, are we now going to be the only parliament in the world where members of the government are actually in opposition?”
The row has marred Ireland’s attempt to get to grips with a threat to Ireland’s economic model, which relies heavily on the presence of US multinationals including Apple, Microsoft and Pfizer, posed by Donald Trump’s vow to repatriate what he says are American jobs and taxes.
Under the deal hammered out between the two main parties, Martin will remain taoiseach for three years, with the outgoing prime minister, the Fine Gael leader, Simon Harris, taking over in November 2027.
Harris will become deputy prime minister, with a beefed-up foreign affairs ministerial role to include international trade, a role already dubbed “minister for Trump”.
The independent TD Michael Healy-Rae said all TDs should get on with delivering government. “We see what is happening in America. We need decisiveness,” he said.
Martin will name his 15-strong cabinet this evening. Just four ministerial roles are expected to go to women after an election that resulted in the lowest proportion of female parliamentarians in western Europe, with a 75:25 ratio of men to women.
The two centre-right parties were only one seat short of the 87 majority needed to form a government on their own.
But with their third partner, the Greens, virtually wiped out, and Labour and the Social Democrats deciding against coalition, the two parties are relying on a confidence and supply deal with a group of 10 independents.
The most senior woman in the government, Helen McEntee, a former justice minister and key minister of state during the Brexit negotiations, is expected to get the education portfolio, with Jennifer Carroll MacNeill, the outgoing Europe minister expected to get the health job.
