SUSPENDED GREEN PARTY TD Neasa Hourigan has said she remains undecided on whether to back the government in an upcoming no-confidence vote in the Dáil.
Hourigan and her party colleague Patrick Costello had the whip removed from them in May after they voted against the coalition on an issue related to the relocation of the National Maternity Hospital.
Their votes could be key in Tuesday’s no-confidence motion in the Fianna Fail, Fine Gael and Green Party administration.
“I am as yet undecided,” Hourigan told RTE Radio One.
She that government whips had not yet been in contact with her about the confidence vote.
“I would appreciate if I could get some communication from the whips around what is expected when you are suspended.”
The motion, which has been brought by Sinn Féin, comes after the government lost its majority in the Dáil.
Fine Gael TD and former education minister Joe McHugh resigned the party whip after he voted against the government’s controversial Bill to provide redress to homeowners in counties affected by defective building blocks.
The loss of McHugh saw the number of government TDs drop to 79 – one short of a Dail majority.
Hourigan’s insistence that the party whips had not been in contact with her appeared at odds with a claim from Green Party minister of state Pippa Hackett, who said she understood that there had been engagement with the suspended TDs.
Speaking to RTE One, Hackett added: “We have no concerns about next week’s vote of confidence in us, I think this is not surprising from Sinn Féin in the last week of the Dail term to come up with this.”
Last year, Fianna Fáil also lost one of its TDs when Marc MacSharry quit the party.
The three government parties are hoping that he, Hourigan, Costello and McHugh will all back them in the vote.
Taoiseach Micheal Martin is also hopeful of securing the backing of several other independent TDs.
As such, government ministers are confident of winning the vote, despite Labour, the Social Democrats, People Before Profit/Solidarity, the Rural Independents and Aontú all set to support the Sinn Féin motion.
Sinn Féin president Mary Lou McDonald said independent TDs were facing a “big call” on whether they were going to back “bad government” or instead “stand up and be counted” to secure a change in administration.
Fine Gael minister of state Peter Burke branded the motion a “stunt” that would waste Dáil time.
“The Government and Fine Gael are completely focused on tackling the issues that impact on people’s lives, and Sinn Féin’s politically motivated motion will simply take valuable Dáil time away from that work,” he said.
Earlier, McDonald rejected claims her party’s motion was a “stunt” that was unlikely to succeed.
“Democracy isn’t stunts and parliamentary procedures are not stunts,” she told BBC NI.
“The Government has lost its Dáil majority. They’ve been in office for two years and, despite their protestations to the contrary, we have seen a bad situation made worse by their inability to innovate, to deliver, to change and the time has come now and the time is right to call that out.”
She challenged undecided TDs to back no confidence.
“There are others now who have a big call to make and will have a big call to make on Tuesday and it boils down to this – do they believe that this Government is successful? The evidence clearly demonstrates that they are not.
“But those TDs need to now decide will they vote to allow a bad government to continue and for people to suffer, or will they stand up and be counted, back our motion and allow the opportunity for a new government, for a government of change that can actually deliver in the way that people need.”
One issue that could influence how some TDs vote is the government’s plan to tackle climate change.
Rural members are concerned that setting an onerous carbon reduction target for the agriculture setting could devastate the industry.
At the weekend it emerged that Environment Minister and Green Party leader Eamon Ryan will not bring a final plan setting out sectoral emission targets to Cabinet this week as originally planned.
Mr Ryan and Agriculture Minister Charlie McConalogue have yet to agree what requirements will be imposed on the farming sector. They are trying to settle on a target within a range of 22% to 30%.
Hourigan was asked whether her view of the government would be influenced by the ability of the Greens to secure its climate agenda.
She said if the coalition parties could not agree carbon budgets it would represent a failure.
“The effectiveness of the Greens in government of course has an impact on how I feel about voting on all the difficult issues that come across the table and come up in the Dáil,” she said.
“And that of course does have an impact because you want to make sure that you’re doing what you promised your voters that you would do, that you would go in there and you would fight not just for climate change, but climate change that operates in a way that doesn’t hurt the most vulnerable.”
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