Independent TD Mattie McGrath has said that concerted actions by certain members of the Dail Technical Group which lead to the suspension of the house earlier today will refelect extremely poorly on the integrity of the Group in the eyes of the public.
Deputy McGrath was commenting after Dail proceedings had to be suspended due to row over the Ceann Comhairle offering speaking time to the Reform Alliance.
It began when the Technical Group’s whip Catherine Murphy complained about a letter which stated that Sean Barret said that he was prepared to allocate speaking time to Reform Alliance TDs if they were not included in speaking slots by the Technical Group.
Mr Barret said that he had the right to do this under standing order rules.
However Deputy Murphy and Technical Group member John Halligan accused Ceann Comhairle of interfering with the rules of the technical group.
After a subsequent row Tds subsequently voted to suspend Ms Murphy, Mr Halligan and Deputy Thomas Pringle.
Debate in the Dail was eventually suspended for the rest of the day just after 2.30 this afternoon.
Commenting afterwards Deputy McGrath said that the deputies involved wanted to, in his words, look like rebels for democracy but ended up looking like babies whose toys had been thrown out of their pram.
He went on to question whether it is any wonder that “people are losing faith in the Dail to carry out an honest day’s work without juvenile histrionics being the order of the day”.
