The Labour Party will join the Government in the Dáil this morning to push through changes in procedure designed to reduce the prominence of the Green Party, Sinn Féin and Independents.
The latest move in the bitter Dáil battle for dominance among the Opposition parties will see Labour restored as the second largest grouping in the House for the purposes of asking questions and contributing to debates.
As a result of the deal, which was condemned yesterday as a betrayal by the other Opposition parties, Labour will vote to allow the Taoiseach to reduce the amount of time he has to spend in the Chamber answering questions.
Fine Gael, the Green Party, Sinn Féin and Mr Joe Higgins of the Socialist Party yesterday condemned Labour for agreeing to reduce the time the Taoiseach spends answering questions in the Dáil.
Mr Ahern answers questions on the Dáil's order of business on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, as well as taking questions for 45 minutes on Tuesday and again on Wednesday. The new rules will mean he does not take questions on Thursday's order of business, although in practice he has been absent from the Dáil chamber on many Thursdays in the past year anyway.
Labour's decision to strike a deal follows the recent formation of the so-called Technical Group in the Dáil, comprising of the Six Green Party TDs, the five from Sinn Féin and eleven independents. This group has one more member than the Labour Party, and, according to existing Dáil rules, has pre-eminence over Labour when it comes to asking questions of the Taoiseach and contributing to debates.
However Labour's deal with the Government will thwart the members of the Technical Group from whom Labour is facing a serious electoral challenge. Defending the deal yesterday, Labour's chief whip, Mr Emmet Stagg, said it would "restore the primacy of political parties in procedural matters in the Dáil". The criticisms were "hysterical and ill-founded", he said.
The Government chief whip, Ms Mary Hanafin, said the Government believed Labour, as a political party, should take precedence over "a technical group which rotates its leader and of its nature does not speak with one voice."
However, the Fine Gael leader, Mr Enda Kenny, objected to reports that the Taoiseach was to "absent himself from the House every Thursday". He said this raised the question of "whether we will have an executive Government without any responsibility to the House and the people."
The Green Party leader, Mr Trevor Sargent, suggested that parliamentary accountability was now under threat. "Other despots, like Hitler, tried to remove accountability from parliament. The Taoiseach is trying to remove accountability from the Dáil and wants a one-and-a-half-day week.
"How does that go down with the workers of the country?"
Sinn Féin deputy, Mr Caoimhghin Ó Caolain, said a "sordid little deal" had been done to allow the Taoiseach to absent himself from the business of the Dáil on Thursdays.