Katherine Zappone Envoy Gig

Independent TDs Peter Fitzpatrick, Michael Lowry, Noel Grealish, Denis Naughton, Danny Healy-Rae, Michael Healy-Rae, Richard O'Donoghue, Cathal Berry, Michael Fitzmaurice, Michael McNamara and Marian Harkin voted in support of Simon Coveney.

Evidently you did come down in the last shower as your acting like this is the first time anything like this has happened under the party whip system.

Colm Buffoon Brophy on morning Ireland spouting more Gik

Colm using the Scary word again explaining a TD'S right to use Dail privilege, disgraceful.

Colm should be minister for Diarrhea, not Diaspora, he's just extraordinary and Not in a good way

Or is it to protect "his" seat. One thing about these dynasty politicians, they sure know how to hold seats. Even when their cumann or constituency want rid.

😀😃 someone beat me to it to quote this. Second one, just for the record. you know how hard it is for some people not to delete text.

Nothing like this until 2025. Are bookies quoting on that?

Harris has a lot do with the vote. If he had not leaked we would not have been where we were last night.

Simon Harris, was the Icing on the cake, a gift that just keeps giving. I think he'll be avoiding journalists microphones for a while which will be probably more Traumatic for him than being caught rapid. More to come on the angle of the story 😏

"Coalition in chaos amid Simon Harris leak claims and Fianna Fáil TD’s resignation - Independent.ie" https://m.independent.ie/irish-news/politics/coalition-in-chaos-amid-simon-harris-leak-claims-and-fianna-fail-tds-resignation-40855760.html

Might be wise if he looks in the Back Bone section also, I believe there's a Political Sale on at the moment, quite a crowd outside this morning 😁😂

It would have been interesting with a free vote for his party. If the government did collapse after it then he could point to FG being the ones responsible. It's highly unlikely he'll be very be Taoiseach again either way but he's damaged his own party something terrible this past few months.

MM showed his true colours over this past few weeks. Stood firmly behind am opposition TD who was caught bang to rights giving a buddy a nice cushy job and deleting government communications from his phone.

Looks at how differently MM reacted when he sacked Cowen

The Taoiseach said:"He accepted what he did was absolutely wrong and he apologised to all members. I accepted that his remorse was genuine and I accepted his apology."The challenges facing this government are unprecedented. It is in everyone's interest that the government not be distracted in any way."

Yet, we are to believe this nonsense hasn't distracted government over the past few weeks, with the lies, coverups, misleading statements that needed "clarifications", phone hacking, destroying government correspondence against the law.

Coveney survived but what damage to the coalition partners will receive is only going to be known at the next election.

And how else do Fine Gael suggest we achieve below because Martin did nothing for 50 days...

Fine Gael New Politics document 2011

Fine Gael is convinced that public confidence in government can be restored – but only if there is real tangible change in the political system. The New Politics is designed to tackle head-on the major weaknesses in our archaic system of government, so that the huge policy mistakes of the last few years will not be repeated. It will:

End “Crony Government” in Ireland by opening up government and giving the Dáil, for the first time in its history, real power to hold ministers and public bodies to account;

Getting Coveney would have been a nice bonus for them but they now have the government parties on record defending cronyism, lies, and possible breaches of the law. It was a classic opposition party move and it worked.