Opening the three-hour debate, Prime Minister Micheál Martin said Ireland couldn’t afford the squabbling in the Dáil Éireann chamber at a time when incoming U.S. tariffs on EU goods imperil Ireland’s export-driven economy.
“Our country is facing enormous threats,” Martin said, referencing the tariffs expected to be announced Wednesday by U.S. President Donald Trump. “We simply do not have time to waste on cynical strategies of aggression and disruption.”
Led by the main opposition Sinn Féin, several parties on the left of Irish politics called for Murphy’s head following last week’s struggle to agree new rules determining who gets to ask Martin questions.
Angering the opposition, which normally dominates question periods, a new slot has been created for a small group of pro-government independent lawmakers led by one of the parliament’s most scandal-tainted politicians, Michael Lowry.
Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald emphasized that her party wanted Murphy to lose the speaker’s post specifically because Lowry had been instrumental in getting her the job. (Murphy was among the independent lawmakers who agreed to support Martin’s government, giving it a working majority.) McDonald said the speaker had an intolerable pro-Lowry bias.
“The Ceann Comhairle is not fair, is not impartial, is not independent and cannot stay,” the Sinn Féin leader said of Murphy.
Murphy didn’t speak in her own defense and left the speaker’s chair soon after the debate on her future began. The deputy speaker, John McGuinness, took her place.
To date the dispute has prevented the government from forming parliamentary committees tasked with scrutinizing, amending and advancing legislative bills. The next flash point will likely be whether Lowry or other pro-government independents are given committee chairs normally awarded to opposition lawmakers.
