Forming the next Irish Government - policies and personalities

Eh, thats the approach to be taken with all legal advice, unless you're a fool.

All legal advice is debatable until adjudicated on by the appropriate Court.

As said above, the problem is the advice miraculously changed.

Either that or else she ignored the initial legal advice.

She's fairly tarnished by this affair.

The irony of this given he added 3 junior ministers which was not mentioned in any manifesto and is most likely in breach of the constitution by having 4 super junior ministers sitting at cabinet.

How is it a lie to have one bit of legal advice superseded by better legal advice ?

The lie word is bandied about like the cry wolf in the hen house

It’s belittled the word when everything not to people’s liking gets called a lie

Ah I dont think somethings a lie because I dont have access to some of what informed her decision?

There does seem to be evidence here that shes behaved admirably in the end

Lowry and the others were taking the proverbial anyway in that our system is not tge ssme as the UK PMQ's where everyone gets to as questions,government or opposition mp's at the speakers discretion

Ours is set up specefically for non government T,D's to question ministers/The Taoiseach

I dont see what Lowry & co can do now

I've no doubt they lobbied Martin

He's relieved now I'd say

Exactly.

The opposition can decide if this is a hill they want to die on, and express no confidence in her, but even if such a motion were to be successful (it wouldn't) then a new CC would have to come from opposition ranks and effectively lose them another seat to the government majority.

My guess is they'll take the win from the decision, and Verruca Murphy will carry on in the Chair, until her next rocky patch anyway.

Mod: stop with the silly name calling

Its not that I don't have access to info its simply that her statements conflict with each other. She originally said she had legal advice saying they could sit in opposition and then when it kicked off and she lost control said she needed to get legal advice to see if they could sit in opposition. My read of those conflicting statements is she didn't have the latter and was hoping to fudge it all without any pushback.

She didnt behave admirably in the end she simply followed the law. If the legal advice she ended up receiving said they arent allowed sit in opposition she isn't behaving admirably by following the law especially when she originally was trying to push through them sitting in opposition without any discussion which her own legal advice now confirms would be breaking the law.

Also you seem to be ignoring she was originally part of lowrys group, there is not one doubt in my mind she was being encouraged privately by lowry the whole time to push this through and was attempting to do so as payment for getting elected CC in the first place.

When it comes to lowry and the people close to him, as VM is, giving the benefit of the doubt as you seem to be doing is incredibly naive.

Anyway her handling of the entire farce was atrocious and sets an incredibly poor tone for her time as CC, i fully expect to see more scenes as we have from both benches as they all now know they can push her around and under even the slightest pressure she will behave like a headless chicken in a panic as she hasn't a clue what shes doing.

If she wants to regain a fraction of an impression impartiality she should simply publish both sets of legal advice she claims to have received.

OR she set aside the original legal advice and came to a reasonable decision which she is entitled to do

I mean how can you say she had no legal advice when you don’t know?

Probably Jim O Callaghan. 😉

It was clear at the time.

She said that she had legal advice from the Oireachtas Legal Adviser - a civil servant employed by the Oireachtas.

She later said that she would get further legal advice from a Senior Counsel - a barrister down at the Four Courts.

No conflict in her statements, once the legal advice was challenged, she went to get further legal advice.

Well I don’t give two hoots about that tbh or anything that isn’t making Ireland great again (😆) either

Paul Murphy sort of suggesting that the government could still amend standing orders. I'd be astounded at this point if they did, the government has already spent a lot of political capital on nothing, it'd be bonkers if they went further.

TL;DR - yes the voters were misled on housing before the election, SimonHarris is on the record as saying

"This year, we will exceed our housing targets [of 33,450] with almost 40,000 homes built."

https://www.rte.ie/news/analysis-and-comment/2025/0202/1494131-housing-targets-election/

But I'm sure he won't be commenting much more on the latest housing failure, I think there's speed limit changes coming in to distract us all from real problems

Or maybe he will do the honourable thing, collapse the government and give what is now a much more honest figure of failure to the public in an upcoming general election?

Or the CC decided to be pragmatic which is her discretion