Delayed party appointments of Oireachtas committee chairpersons under way ahead of Dáil return next week
The appointments, which come with a €10,880 salary top-up, have been held up by a long-running row between the Opposition and the Government over the allocation of speaking time in the Dáil. The dispute eventually subsided amid acrimony and ill feelings last month.
Chair and member positions on committees, which scrutinise legislation and actions of public bodies, are allocated to parties and Oireachtas groupings relative to their numerical strength.
Among the most high-profile committee exercises of late is the Public Accounts Committee's scrutiny of
RTÉ
's spending, following a controversy over additional payments to broadcaster
Ryan Tubridy
.
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In the wake of
discontent over a €6.7 million spend on a failed IT project
, the
Arts Council
is expected to be among the first state bodies invited to appear before the Arts and Media Committee, to which the
Labour Party
has assigned veteran TD
Alan Kelly
as chair.
Fianna Fáil
confirmed appointments of its committee chairpersons in a statement on Thursday afternoon, elevating a mixture of experienced TDs and those more recently elected.
Fine Gael
is contacting its TDs about committee chair positions. It is expected that
Sinn Féin
may not reveal its line-up before tomorrow.
Only one first-term TD has been put forward by
Micheál Martin
: Louth deputy Erin McGreehan, who is also the only woman named in the party's list.
This leaves two women among Fianna Fáil's current batch of TDs who have not been appointed as ministers or committee chairs. They are Dublin South-Central's Catherine Ardagh and Meath East's Aisling Dempsey.
Former minister of state Seán Fleming, who TD for Laois, will head the Committee on Infrastructure and National Development Plan Delivery, but there is no place for another long-time TD and former junior minister: Cavan-Monaghan's Brendan Smith. Although he hails from a border constituency, chairmanship of the Committee on the Implementation of the
Good Friday Agreement
has gone to Dún Laoghaire's Cormac Devlin.
Another Dublin TD appointed is Dublin South-West's John Lahart, who will chair the Foreign Affairs and Trade Committee.
Cork will be represented by Aindrias Moynihan (Cork North-West), who will chair the Agriculture and Food Committee, and Cork East's James O'Connor, who will head the Committee on Enterprise, Tourism and Employment.
Malcolm Byrne, TD for Wicklow-Wexford, will lead the Committee on
Artificial Intelligence
, while Clare's Cathal Crowe, a teacher by training, will chair the Committee on Education and Youth.
Sinn Féin is expected to announce the names of its seven committee chairs on Friday.
Tánaiste and Fine Gael leader
Simon Harris
is understood to have told some of his parliamentary party who will be taking the reins at committees led by Fine Gael representatives.
They include Dún Laoghaire's Barry Ward, who will chair the
EU
Affairs Committee, and Tipperary South's Michael Murphy, who will lead the Transport Committee. Roscommon TD Micheál Carrigy will chair the Housing Committee.
Cork North-West's John Paul O'Shea is also tipped for elevation among Fine Gael backbenchers, as is Mayo's Keira Keogh and Carlow-Kilkenny's Catherine Callaghan.
As well as appointing Alan Kelly, Labour will nominate the chair of the committee related to issues affecting the Traveller community, with Kildare South's Mark Wall in the running to be appointed.
The
Social Democrats
are to appoint
Gary Gannon
of Dublin Central to head the Committee on Drug Use, while their first-time TD for Cork South-Central, Pádraig Rice, will chair the Committee on Health.
Limerick County TD Richard O'Donoghue, of Independent Ireland, is being tipped to chair the Budgetary Oversight Committee, with independent for Galway West, Catherine Connolly, likely to lead the Irish Language Committee.
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