EXCLUSIVE: 'I felt it was a good political move' says Lowry after Government formation talks

Michael Lowry has stated that his decision to become part of the formation of the new Government, and to elect Verona Murphy as Ceann Comhairle was “a good political move.”

Speaking with Tipperary Live, Deputy Lowry outlined the work that went into the negotiations, as well as his intentions to attain a seat on the opposition benches so as to gain speaking rights and access to Question Time.

He said: “Our original group, there was eight of us, one of them is gone in as Ceann Comhairle, four others are ministers, so they have resigned from our group, and gone into Government benches. The remainder of the group remain as a technical group, and that’s what obviously the dispute is about. We’re perfectly entitled to remain as a technical group, and we have added numbers to that technical group, which is Peadar Toibin and Paul Lawless, that’s his second fella, and also Danny Healy-Rae.

“As it stands, the standing orders allow for what we’re doing. The current standing order, and there can be no change to the standing orders until after the formation of a Government, when Ministers are appointed. Then what happens is the Dáil appoints a new committee, and that committee oversees the regulations and the rules of the Dáil, so whatever proposal, if those that are unhappy with the present arrangement, if they’re unhappy with that, they have to bring a proposal to that committee, and that committee’s proposal’s come back for ratification then by the full Dáil.

“Just to make that clear, as it currently stands with the standing orders, the standing orders for the old, for the 33rd Dáil, they stay in position until the government has formed, which is next Wednesday. So then the 34th Dáil appoints a new committee, all new committees in fact, well the first one will be one that will run the business of the Dáil, it’s what they call the Reform of the Dáil Committee, Dáil Reform Committee, so there’ll be new members appointed to that, and they will accept any proposals that are discussed, somebody will obviously, Sinn Féin or People Before Profit, will bring a proposal to change standing orders, they’ll disqualify us from sitting on the opposition as a technical group. They will probably move to that, but ultimately I don’t think they’ll be successful.

“Well I represented, and I was at a meeting last Tuesday, I was representing my group, the Regional group, and at that meeting, I suppose you could call it, there was a bit of a ‘gang-up’ with Sinn Féin, Labour, Democratic Left, and People Before Profit, saying that they wanted the standing orders changed to disqualify our group from doing that, and availing of our opportunity to avail of question time and to avail of speaking rights, so needless to say, my position and the position of our group is that I’m an independent, I was elected as an Independent, my name appeared on the ballot paper as Non-Party, I don’t have a ministerial role, and therefore I’m entitled to make a decision as to who we’ll support, I’ve done that for the last several Governments as to who I’ll support, I mean I don’t see any difference in this Government and the last Government on my position on the basis that in the last Government, on most occasions, I agreed with Government policy, and I voted with the Government, so I do see what, there is no difference. My situation hasn’t changed on an individual basis, so I’ll be obviously protecting my rights as an Independent when it comes to later discussion on that.

“First of all I think, well, after the election I told you that, I did actually say to you that, the way I saw the election outcome being finalised in the final votes and tallies around the country, I could see that a situation was going to emerge where independents would have a say. In actual fact, at the IFA meeting before the election in the Ragg, I did say that that meeting, we were asked at the meeting, it was a public meeting, and we were asked at the meeting, each candidate was asked how they saw the outcome of the next election, and I predicted what the outcome would be, I said Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael will be very close to a majority between them, and they’ll require the support of Independents to form a stable government, and that’s exactly what transpired. So when the election was over and that’s the way it looked, I moved quite quickly to put together the regional group to add to the numbers that we had, and then I, you know, I have a very coherent, a very strong, a very united group, and, then, we were in a position where I was suggested the appointment, I felt it was a good political move to make to put forward Verona Murphy as Ceann Comhairle, and that was really an important and decisive moment because I felt that once she was elected as Ceann Comhairle, and there had to be a lot of political manoeuvring to make that happen but once she was elected as Ceann Comhairle, then that put our regional group in the driving seat for discussions on the formation of a Government, and we then proceeded, that group, our group proceeded to develop and formulate policy documents, so effectively, I’ve had no break since the election, I’ve been working, first of all to get Verona Murphy elected, and then to prepare our group’s policy position and policy platform in readiness for negotiations, and then we started negotiations, I was the lead negotiator with relation to that. I think we achieved a fantastic result for our group, in that we had a Ceann Comhairle, two Super Junior Ministers, and two Junior Ministers, and all of them have very important roles and functions within a wide variety of departments. So, I’m actually, I was pleased as well that the two Healy-Raes came onboard because it gives us a cushion, it gives us a comfortable majority in the Dáil, and allows us to get on with the work now of governing, and to give a stable and steady Government and to make the decisions that are needed in the public interest.”