Gnó na Dála - Business of Dáil Dail Éireann — 2025-01-22 ============================================================ Mary Lou McDonald (SF), Dublin Central It is astonishing, after weeks and weeks of haggling among the parties that proposed to form Government over who would get which job, and how much they could increase the respective allowance for their record number of Ministers of State, that we find ourselves meeting on the first day of the Dáil and the first action of Government is to propose a further two-week holiday. This is unacceptable. We all know the big issues that face people on the ground and the message to Government needs to be: "Get to work." There is no rationale, no excuse and no reason for further delay and for this two-week holiday. Second, the speaking arrangements outlined, or proposed, by the Government Whip underscore again a cynical and unprecedented ruse from Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael to place their Independent cronies - supporters of the Government - on the Opposition benches and to afford to them the same speaking rights as genuine parties of opposition----- --- 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/2025-01-22/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-09-14T01:00:53+00:00 Sitting date: 2025-01-22