Government to consider filling Healy-Rae role in coming days, says Norma Foley

 Norma Foley said the Government would consider what to do with the vacant post 

The resignation raises questions about whether the position would go to a different independent TD who supported the coalition with Fianna Fail and Fine Gael, or go to a member of those parties. Picture: Don MacMonagle

Children's minister Norma Foley has said she imagines the minister of state role vacated by Michael Healy-Rae will be filled.

Mr Healy-Rae announced his resignation during a confidence motion over the fuel crisis on Tuesday, stepping down as a junior minister at the Department of Agriculture.

Speaking to RTÉ radio on Wednesday, Ms Foley said the Government would consider what to do with the vacant post in the coming days.

The resignation raises questions about whether the position would go to a different independent TD who supported the coalition with Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, or go to a member of those parties.

The Government may also choose not to fill the post to reduce the overall number of junior ministers and instead assign the responsibilities of the role to another minister.

Asked for her own view, Ms Foley said: “There’s a job of work to be done in the Department of Agriculture and there is a vacancy in the Department of Agriculture and I imagine that will be filled – but the decision will be made in the coming days.”

Meanwhile, enterprise minister Peter Burke has denied that the resignation of Michael Healy Rae will damage the government.

Burke also denied a claim that the government did not understand rural Ireland.

The Longford-Westmeath TD said he knew the pressures people were under and that the government had responded by bringing forward “the biggest package per capita by multiples in the EU now to support our citizens right around our country.” 

The government had been very clear since March that they would bring in further interventions, but they had to work with various sectors first to determine what would best suit their needs, he told Newstalk Breakfast.

Mr Burke denied that the government had been weakened. 

“Firstly, we won the vote by 14. That's a very significant margin for any confidence vote. Secondly and I would say this to your listeners so importantly actions have consequences. If that vote was to succeed last night firstly it would leave the country without a government.

“The interventions people will be seeing over the next number of days would not be possible so you'd have a general election for a number of weeks and looking at how you make a government subsequent to a general election if you just look at the the chances of that vote succeeding was so minimal it's not worth analysis.

“The coalition is very resolute, it is very strong, it has a very significant margin but one critical thing is for the quarter of a billion intervention and the intervention last night these are financial resolutions giving money back to people the opposition voted all over the place," he said.