Updated, 16.27

THE GOVERNMENT has confirmed that the Labour party’s junior minister Jan O’Sullivan has been made a ‘super-junior minister’ with a seat at the Cabinet table.

Limerick City TD O’Sullivan, who was the junior minister at the Department of Foreign Affairs, will take up a similar role at the Department of the Environment with responsibility for housing and planning.

O’Sullivan takes up the brief made vacant by the resignation of Willie Penrose, who quit the cabinet – and the Labour party – in mid-November in protest at government plans to close an army barracks in his constituency of Longford-Westmeath.

Joe Costello, a Labour TD in Dublin Central who currently chairs the Oireachtas committee on EU affairs, has also been promoted today.

He moves to the job being made vacant by O’Sullivan, and will be a junior minister response for trade and planning.

The promotion of Costello, 66, to ministerial ranks will be widely seen as a reward for his performance in the presidential election, where he served as Director of Elections to the Labour Party candidate Michael D Higgins.

In a government press statement, Costello said he was honoured to be offered a junior ministry and was delighted to accept it.

“It is extremely important that Ireland maintains its good international reputation in Trade and Development, particularly in the area of Overseas Development Aid, even in these difficult economic times for our country,” he said.

O’Sullivan said her priorities in the housing brief would include “addressing the issue of homelessness which is very apparent at this time of year.

“I will also be very conscious of working towards alleviating the stresses of those families who are struggling to meet their mortgages,” the minister added.

Additional reporting by Hugh O’Connell