Danny Healy-Rae's vote move riles up the Coalition
The Independent TD, a supporter of the Government, took the highly unusual step of calling a vote on a People Before Profit-Solidarity Bill to ban fox hunting at the 'first stage', when typically all pieces of legislation are allowed to proceed to 'second stage' where they can be debated.
Taoiseach Micheál Martin, seemingly unaware a Government-supporting TD had called the vote, on Thursday condemned Sinn Féin for voting against the Bill passing to second stage, saying it showed a 'sense of populism' and a 'lack of backbone'. Danny Healy-Rae. Pic: Alan Rowlette/RollingNews.ie
He said that an individual TD, be it a member of a party, a backbencher or an independent, 'should have the right to at least bring legislation forward, and… to introduce it to second stage, where then there is a debate'.
Mr Healy-Rae's brother Michael, the junior minister at the Department of Agriculture, was absent for the vote, while Michael Lowry – the de facto leader of the Government-supporting Regional Independent Group – also voted against.
The Government is opposed to the legislation itself, but voted it through to the second stage for debate on a point of principle. Coalition sources called Mr Healy-Rae's decision to call the vote 'not just unusual', but 'unprecedented in 20 years'. Taoiseach Micheál Martin at Bloom. Pic: Liam McBurney/PA Wire
A Government spokesman commented: 'The decision to call a vote on this Bill at first stage means that in effect this has become a vote on the right of a TD to table legislation. It would be undemocratic and unprecedented in the modern parliamentary era for the Government to vote down the right of a legislator to table a Bill at first stage. We are clear that the vote should not have been called at this stage, and it is not good practice for TDs to be denied their right to table bills.
'For that reason the Government will vote for the Bill at first stage but will oppose it at second stage.'
At the Bloom festival in Dublin on Thursday, the Taoiseach said he was 'shocked' to hear Sinn Féin had voted against the Bill at the first stage. Extra.ie has asked Mr Martin's spokesman if the Taoiseach was aware Mr Healy-Rae had called the vote at the time he made those comments.
A response was not received by time of publication. Danny Healy-Rae. Pic: Leon Farrell/RollingNews.ie
Mr Healy-Rae defended his position on Thursday. He told the Extra.ie: 'Things like that I have my own knowledge and I couldn't vote at any stage for fox hunting to be banned.
'If they got away with that maybe the next time they'd stop a farmer from shooting a fox. And I know what the fox has done even to my own son this year. Wherever the ewe had two lambs, the fox took one of them. The ewe can only take care of one. So that's one of the things. That was replicated right around the place and that's pure nonsense, the foxes have taken over.
'I couldn't allow that… I knew what I was doing from the first minute with that Bill. I met one deputy that didn't know that a fox would kill a lamb. I won't say his name out of respect.'
Asked who had called the 'unprecedented' vote, Mr Healy-Rae, said: 'You've got me there, I called for it… What benefit is it to allow it to go through only to vote against it anyway? Wasting money and there are important Bills sitting there in the Bills Office and to think we would clog it up further? It doesn't make common sense to me anyway.'
The Bill passed to the second stage despite Mr HealyRae's opposition.
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