Twas the day of Dáil recess, and throughout Leinster House, not many rebels were stirring, some are now as quiet as a mouse.
Merry Christmas! Today is the last Dáil school day of 2025, as politics starts to wind down for the festive season. Taoiseach Micheál Martin might be looking forward to a particularly restful break. Like the townsfolk of Whoville, he may feel this morning that he has emerged somewhat victorious from a plot to have Christmas stolen from right out under him.
The Taoiseach’s detractors, not unlike the Grinch, seem to have come unstuck by a most basic mathematical element. Was their abortive heave two sizes too small?
My colleagues and I spent the day yesterday trying to contact every Fianna Fáil TD, Senator and MEP to get an on-the-record comment from a series of questions – including if they believed it was now time to put the issues of the presidential election behind them, and if they supported Martin continuing on as leader.
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What seemed notable to us, and what is reflected in our story this morning, were the number of so-called “rebels” who declined to make any comment at all. As Cormac McQuinn put it, “the possibility of a rebellion against Mr Martin’s leadership of Fianna Fáil over the party’s disastrous presidential election campaign appears to be quelled for now. However, there are signs internal opposition to him will continue.”
One Fianna Fáil Minister laid it out in harsh terms: “If this was the rebels’ finest hour, they blew it.” But it would be unwise to assume the threat from Martin’s own Mount Crumpit – that is, the corners of Cork from which his detractors ruminate on his demise – has been completely neutralised. As Pat the Cope Gallagher warned during the five hour parliamentary party meeting this week, “this is not over.”
Pat Leahy puts it in his analysis piece like this: “They all have their own reasons: political differences; personal ambition; a sense of grievance against Martin; a combination of all three. People have speculated about the possibility of a heave, but the reality is a heave has been under way for months. It just hasn’t succeeded. Not yet, anyway.”
Martin is in Brussels today for a meeting of the European Council which will discuss Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, as well as security and defence issues for the EU. He will raise ongoing concerns about the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. All important matters, but the domestic events of the week may not be far from his mind.
Though he has survived for now, the Taoiseach would be wise to pay attention to the end of Dr Seuss’s seminal text. In the end the Grinch’s heart, perhaps not unlike a prospective heave, didn’t need all that much to happen for it to grow three sizes in a day.
A very bad Christmas for foxes
The final weekly division of 2025 took place last night. Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and Sinn Féin all opposed legislation from Ruth Coppinger that would have banned fox hunting. TDs voted to retain the apparent “rural pursuit” by 124 votes to 24.
Coppinger said it was “ironic that the three big parties in the Dáil that profess to be nationalist maintain this when it has been banned in the UK for over 20 years”. Sinn Féin, as has not escaped the notice of some, also opposed the ban. The party’s TD Réada Cronin made it clear that she did not support her party’s position. Marie O’Halloran reports how Cronin said “every politician has days when their personal beliefs collide with their obligations as a party member”.
What was also interesting, as Marie also reported for us, were the number of Government TDs – including the Minister for Health Jennifer Carroll MacNeill – who voted to restore a Private Members’ Bill on abortion to the order paper.
This was a Bill that former TD Bríd Smith had brought forward in the last Dáil, the main proposal of which was to abolish an existing mandatory three day wait before a woman can access an abortion. This wait was effectively a political invention before the referendum on the Eighth Amendment – it was not proposed by either a citizens assembly or the Oireachtas committee on the Eighth Amendment. It was also criticised by a review the Government ordered into the operation of its own abortion law.
As Marie reports, just two votes separated the sides. Minister for Foreign Affairs Helen McEntee was also among TDs who voted in favour of the legislation being restored to the order paper. “Minister for Public Expenditure Jack Chambers also voted in favour of restoring the Bill. He had been on the No side in the 2018 referendum which repealed the ban on abortion.”
Legal action on Dublin Monaghan bombings
Seanín Graham has an important story on a legal action that has been launched against the Irish State “over its alleged failure to carry out an “effective investigation” into the 1974 Dublin and Monaghan bombings.”
She writes: “Letters were sent to the Attorney General’s office, Minister for Justice and Garda Commissioner on Monday by a solicitor acting on behalf of some of the bereaved families of the atrocity, which killed 34 people.
Kevin Winters of KRW Law issued the correspondence following last week’s publication of a critical report on Troubles-related controversies. Operation Denton – part of the £47 million (€53.5 million) final Kenova report – found a ‘poor investigative response’ in the original Garda investigation into the bombings, carried out by the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF).”
Meanwhile, Freya McClements is writing a separate story about how the UK government has won a supreme court appeal to block the release of sensitive information to a Troubles-era inquest on the grounds of national security.
“In a judgment which will have implications for other legacy investigations in Northern Ireland, including the identification of the IRA informer known as Stakeknife, the UK’s highest court unanimously allowed the appeal by the Northern Secretary, Hilary Benn, to prevent a coroner from disclosing summaries of evidence contained in secret security force files.”
Best Reads
Oliver Sears, the son of a Holocaust survivor and founder of Holocaust Awareness Ireland, is writing about how during the anti-Semitic terrorist attacks in Bondi on the first night of Hanukkah, “the intifada was truly globalised”.
Newton Emerson tells us this morning there’s just one problem with Ulster Scots: “Unlike the Irish language, it doesn’t exist.”
And Mark Paul has an interesting article on the UK’s Erasmus deal, writing how the response to it suggests “the issue of Britain developing closer ties with the EU is not as verboten as it once was in UK politics.”
Playbook
Dáil
8.47am Parliamentary Questions: Oral – Minister for Children, Disability and Equality
10.24am Parliamentary Questions: Oral – Minister for Climate, Energy and the Environment
12pm Leaders’ Questions (Sinn Féin, Social Democrats, Independent and Parties Technical Group, Independent Technical Group)
12.34pm Other Members’ Questions
12.42pm Questions on Policy or Legislation
1.52pm Parliamentary Questions: Oral – Tánaiste and Minister for Finance
3.29pm Government Business: Garda Síochána (Recording Devices) (Amendment) Bill 2025 – Second Stage
Seanad
9.30am Commencement Matters
10.30am Order of Business
11.30am SOS
11.45am Government Business
– Appropriation Bill 2025 [Certified Money Bill] – All Stages
– Motion regarding the earlier signature of the Appropriation Bill 2025
1.45pm Seanad adjourns
