New Cabinet has Northside flavour

Micheál Martin’s new Cabinet will have a distinctly Northside influence.

After a 24-hour delay (and about a month of coalition negotiations) Micheál Martin was returned to the role of Taoiseach on January 23.

His Cabinet sees a mix of some old and new faces, with previous Cabinet veterans Jack Chambers (Fianna Fáil’s man in Castleknock) Paschal Donohoe (Fine Gael’s man in Phibsborough) and Darragh O’Brien (Fianna Fáil’s man in Malahide) part of the Team of Rivals.

Donohoe will be returning to his former role as Minister for Finance, the position he held between 2017 and 2022, Chambers will be taking up Donohoe’s old job of Minister for Public Expenditure while O’Brien is moving from the role of Minister for Housing to the Department of Transport and Energy.

The trio are expected to remain in their roles until November 2027 upon which Simon Harris (or whoever the leader of Fine Gael happens to be at that stage) assumes the role of Taoiseach and the Cabinet deck is shuffled again.

The Northsiders are no strangers to being part of a Cabinet reshuffle.

As part of the reshuffle which saw Leo Varadkar return to the Taoiseach’s office in December 2022, Donohoe was replaced as Minister for Finance by Michael McGrath, who was later tapped to become Ireland’s EU Commissioner.

Donohoe served as Minister for Public Expenditure between December 2022 and January 2025, before moving back into his old office at the Department of Finance.

Following McGrath’s move to Europe in the summer of 2024, Chambers was tapped to replace his party colleague.

Prior to moving upstairs to the Department of Finance, Chambers served in a number of junior minister roles, most notably as a Minister of State under Eamon Ryan at the Department of Transport.

Chambers was named director of elections for November 2024’s general election, with Fianna Fáil coming out on top with 48 seats and Martin becoming Taoiseach once again.

In Dublin West, Chambers himself was elected on the first count alongside Sinn Féin’s Paul Donnelly (21.5% for Chambers and 17.5% for Donnelly), marking Fianna Fáil’s best performance in the seat since the 2007 general election.

In Dublin Central, Donohoe saw his best election result since 2011 by securing 16.8% of first preferences.

The former Cabra-Glasnevin councillor finished second behind Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald and received the highest number of preferences out of any candidate with 8,069.

Since 2020, Donohoe has served as President of the Eurogroup which sees him chair meetings of all of the finance ministers across the Eurozone.

Donohoe will now resume service as Minister for Finance at a time when global economic headwinds put Ireland’s economy at risk.

The second Trump administration, along with likely changes in government in France, Canada and Germany, means that Ireland is now in the middle of an uncertain global economic climate.

Donohoe has experience on that front, having served as Minister for Finance at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic.

In a speech to the Institute of Directors in 2021, Donohoe said  “as a small open and adaptable economy, our resilience and strength comes from being one that remains open to trade and investment.”

“This has been proven to be the strength of the Irish economy over recent decades and will continue to be our strength in the future.”

Donohoe was President of the Eurogroup when the 2021 G20 summit agreed to raise the minimum corporate tax rate to 15%; Donohoe, despite his self-confessed moniker as a frugal economist who would favour a tax cut over big ticket spending, welcomed the decision.

Speaking in 2021, Donohoe said “joining this agreement is a serious and significant decision. The government and I have considered this very carefully as we did in July in not signing up. It is a sensible and pragmatic decision made by the government in Ireland’s interests and ultimately a decision which will provide the conditions to provide long term certainty for business and investors to the benefit of the many thousands of employees across Ireland.”

The most recent statistics have revealed that Ireland’s increased corporate tax take has been a major driver in the economy recording a surplus in recent years and ultimately, kept Ireland out of a recession.

O’Brien, who served as Minister for Housing since June 2020, will now head up the Department of Transport as part of Micheál Martin’s new Cabinet and will be succeeding former Green Party leader Eamon Ryan in the role.

The Dublin Fingal East poll-topper has been replaced as Minister for Housing by party colleague James Browne.

O’Brien’s tenure as Minister for Housing proved controversial; the final day of his tenure saw the release of statistics from the Central Statistics Office that a total of 30,330 homes were built in Ireland in 2024; a decrease of 6.7% compared to 2023.

In October, during a heated Dáil showdown with Sinn Féin, O’Brien asserted “I have consistently said we will exceed that target and I still confidently predict – Sinn Féin will be disappointed – that it will be the high 30,000s to low 40,000s this year.”

The Fingal TD said, “the fact of the matter is this Government delivered more new social homes last year than has been done in 50 years and will do more this year; we will achieve our social housing new-build targets this year and will exceed our affordable housing targets this year.”

Thursday’s bombshell from the CSO that the government underdelivered on housing targets led to Social Democrats TD Rory Hearne dubbing the government’s housing targets as “pure fiction.”

“Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have consistently demonstrated that they are completely incapable of hitting their own housing targets – targets that were already unambitious to begin with,” the Dublin North-West TD said.

Despite the government falling short of its own expectations in housing, November was largely business as usual for them at the polls.

November’s general election was a success for Fianna Fáil; their 48 Dáil seats saw their best result since 2007 but the election saw the issue of housing raised time and time again.

O’Brien topped the poll in the new constituency of Dublin Fingal East, securing 23.5% of first preferences with the remaining two seats going to Labour’s Duncan Smith and Sinn Féin’s Ann Graves.

O’Brien’s constituency colleague, Alan Farrell of Fine Gael, was Fine Gael’s big casualty on the day.

Exit polls conducted by Ipsos B&A found that housing and homelessness were the main topics on voters’ minds at the polls, with 28% saying that it was the key issue for them.

Under O’Brien’s tenure, the number of people in homeless services in Ireland exceeded 15,000, with over 10,000 of that figure alone being in Dublin.

With the heat off O’Brien on housing, he has been moved sidewards into Eamon Ryan’s old office.

O’Brien will inherit a number of outstanding issues from his predecessor Eamon Ryan, and O’Brien will now be tasked with solving the ongoing issue of the passenger cap row at Dublin Airport, delivering the Metrolink, and rolling out contactless payment on Ireland’s public transport.

With the Greens out of the picture and reduced to one seat (and the government now being at the mercy of independents) O’Brien’s tenure as Minister for Transport will now likely focus on delivering for the Northside while also balancing the demands of government partners and constituents. 

Speaking after being named as part of Micheál Martin’s new Cabinet (which will see three Northsiders and two Southsiders as part of the team), both Chambers and Donohoe welcomed their new roles.

Chambers said he was “honoured” to accept the new role.

His full title is Minister for Public Expenditure, Infrastructure, Public Service Reform & Digitalisation.

“I’m looking forward to leading the department, driving delivery, opportunity and reform across public services and the wider economy along with my colleague Paschal Donohoe in the Department of Finance,” Chambers said.

During the election season, Donohoe lobbied for a new government department dedicated to infrastructure.

Donohoe himself said he was “so pleased” to be asked by Tanaiste Simon Harris to serve in the new government as Minister for Finance.”

“Our country is in a good position but challenges, as well as opportunities, lie ahead. I look forward to the work I have in front of me, continuing to work closely with Minister Jack Chambers and under An Taoiseach, Micheál Martin, to secure our future prospects and deliver what is needed for all the people of Ireland that we have the privilege to serve.”

Chambers and Donohoe will fully assume their roles as Ministers in early February; the Dáil controversially voted for a two-week break, a decision justified as “giving the new Ministers time to learn about their new briefs.”