The phenomenon of the filibuster – where a politician talks endlessly as a means to prolong debate – is one largely associated with the United States, but Cantillon was amused to see two senior ministers get a taste of it in the Oireachtas on Tuesday.
Minister for Finance Simon Harris and Minister for Public Expenditure Jack Chambers were before the Committee on Budgetary Oversight to answer questions on Ireland’s Annual Progress Report 2026.
In advance of the meeting, committee chairman Richard O’Donoghue described it as “a key part” of the committee’s budgetary scrutiny calendar in advance of budget day in October. A shame then that just half the committee managed to turn up.
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It only got worse from there as members filed out of the room after getting their questions in, leaving O’Donoghue, who is an Independent Ireland TD, on his own with the Ministers and their officials for the last 40 minutes of the two-hour hearing.
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In most cases where Oireachtas committees run out of questions – or indeed members – the meeting is wound down early. But no such luck for Harris and Chambers here, with O’Donoghue in his element as he grilled the two men on just about every subject under the sun.
At one stage, after looking quizzically around the otherwise empty room, he put paid to any hopes the Ministers may have had that a half-day from school was in the offing.
“I’m the chair and it looks like I’m the only person that wants to speak,” he laughed. “I might not get the opportunity to sit down with the two Ministers again and have an over and back, so you’ll have to endure this 28 minutes that’s left.”
There was a point during the remainder of the hearing at which Fine Gael TD John Paul O’Shea reappeared, leaving Cantillon to muse whether he had been the recipient of a “come and save me” text from his party leader. O’Shea didn’t get a word in, though.
It was all fairly good-natured stuff; however, Harris at one point told O’Donoghue they could have “different political debates, but we can’t have different facts” as the chairman suggested the recent fuel package was paid for by the taxes of ordinary people at the petrol pumps.
“That’s not true,” Harris asserted. “That is absolutely, factually, completely and utterly untrue. I know you’re the chairman but I have to be allowed speak as well. This is how misinformation spreads.”
Apart from that, Harris was largely unruffled from the event, at the end of which he remarked: “That was a very impressive filibuster.”
