An tOrd Gnó - Order of Business Dail Éireann — 2024-04-16 ============================================================ Simon Harris (FG), Wicklow I assure Deputy Shortall that I appointed people both to Cabinet and as Ministers of State based on their ability. Obviously, leaders and taoisigh can consider a variety of issues. I would point to gender. Every female Fine Gael TD seeking re-election is now a Minister or Minister of State, so that is a commitment to gender. Geography does have an important role to play in politics - it is not all just the greater Dublin area - and having different perspectives brought to the Cabinet table and decision-making tables is important. I do not think there is a need for new guidelines on this, but I will lead a Government that will adhere to the public spending code and will of course put a rationale and criteria in place as regards our spending decisions. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2024-04-16/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:52:50+00:00 Sitting date: 2024-04-16