McEntee survives vote of no confidence

Minister for Justice Helen McEntee has survived a vote of no confidence by a comfortable 20-vote margin. 

She won the vote by 83 votes to 63.

Rumours of a Fianna Fáil backbencher rebellion failed to materialise, and numerous rural Independent TDs said they had confidence in McEntee prior to the vote.

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar defended McEntee prior to the vote, saying that McEntee has overseen increased garda numbers and introduced facial recognition technology during her tenure as Minister.

He dismissed the Sinn Féin motion as a “political stunt,” and said that should McEnte be removed from her post, it would “embolden” people to “strike again.”

Tánaiste Micheál Martin said that the no-confidence motion put down by Sinn Féin “is yet again solely about Sinn Féin pursuing its cynical and aggressive approach to being in opposition.”

He called out Sinn Féin for what he called “cynicism and aggression” and said the party “puts electoral politics first in everything.”

Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald said there is a “general feeling of lawlessness” around Dublin and the response of Government has been “to skirt around the problem” and to “completely abandon these communities”.

She claimed that Gardaí were “left to organise on WhatsApp” on the night of November 23rd.

As predicted, Government had the numbers to survive the vote, with Green Party leader Eamon Ryan the only member of Government not to vote.

On Monday, he announced that him and Social Democrats TD Jennifer Whitmore had agreed to a “vote pairing”, which meant that Ryan would stay in Dubai to represent Ireland at the COP 28 climate summit instead of flying back.

In that event, Ryan’s vote and Whitmore’s vote cancelled each other out.

Independent TD Verona Murphy was the only TD to abstain from the vote.

Combined, Sinn Féin, Social Democrats, Labour, People Before Profit and Aontú’s votes only accounted for 55 no votes, and failed to conjure enough support from independent TDs on the night, as well as major Green Party defections, to force McEntee from her post.