Government under fire over 19-day holiday break

OPPOSITION deputies have rounded on the Government for giving themselves a two-and-a-half-week holiday just six weeks after returning from the Christmas break.

The Dáil rose early yesterday, with practically all ministers and ministers of state absent since the day before, and it will not get down to business again until the afternoon of April 2.

Fine Gael’s Michael Ring described the coalition as a “government in exile” given that so many members were abroad on St Patrick’s Day trips. “We should be sitting in America because that is where ministers are.”