This is the first time the new government will sit after November’s election, with government negotiations taking around five weeks to complete.
The new Dáil has already been the source of controversy after a number of independent TDs including Michael Lowry, Danny Healy-Rae, Barry Heneghan and Gillian Toole, who support the government, want to form a “technical group” which would allow them speaking time and other rights from the opposition benches.
Another member of the group, Michael Healy-Rae, said they were “perfectly entitled to stand up as part of a technical group and ask questions and to be part of debates”.
He told NI’s Good Morning Ulster programme: “When you support a government it doesn’t mean that you are silenced and you can’t be engaging, that you can’t ask questions, that you can’t ask questions of national and local importance.
“We haven’t changed our minds, but what we are doing is we are rowing in to say we need a stable, secure, sound, solid government for the next five years and we are going to support that because we feel that we will better able to serve our constituents and the country by being within government than outside.”
The new Ceann Comhairle (speaker) – also a regional independent – Verona Murphy, who is the first woman to hold the role, told TDs she would consider submissions opposing the plan, but permitted the group to “provisionally” take their original seats for now.
