EX-TAOISEACH Leo Varadkar could be asked to give evidence in court in a case that aims to block super junior ministers from attending Cabinet meetings.
The coalition’s four super junior ministers could be booted out of Cabinet if the new case from People Before Profit TD Paul Murphy is successful.
Fianna Fail’s Mary Butler, Fine Gael’s Hildegarde Naughton and Independent TDs Sean Canney and Noel Grealish were all appointed super junior ministers in this Government – more than ever before.
These super juniors sit at Cabinet meetings with senior ministers but do not have a vote.
The Constitution rules that a maximum of 15 Ministers can be part of the Cabinet.
In a column in the Sunday Times last month, former Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said that the super junior positions were a way for Governments to get around the rule in the Constitution.
Last week, Sinn Fein TD Pa Daly launched a High Court judicial review case which claimed that the four super junior ministerial positions are unconstitutional.
Now, People Before Profit TD Paul Murphy has launched a second legal case against the practice of junior ministers attending Cabinet.
The Dublin TD’s injunction case would block these ministers from attending the Cabinet and could be through the courts in a matter of months.
Deputy Murphy has taken a plenary action in the courts to seek the injunction which means that witnesses could be called to give evidence in the case.
He told the Irish Sun: “In a plenary action there will be oral evidence and crucially for us there will be the capacity to call witness and we can think of a number of people without getting into it who we would like to call as witnesses to explain where this super juniors came from and the rationale for it and to outline how from our perspective it is a stroke that is against the constitution.”
Pressed on whether he wants to call former Taoiseach Leo Varadkar to give evidence in the case on the back of his Sunday Times article, Deputy Murphy said: “Purely as a lay person yes what you are saying sounds like a good idea but I do need to talk to the lawyers about whether that legally makes sense.”
Deputy Murphy said that Varadkar’s article had “copper fastened” his decision to try to take the Government to court over the issue.
The People Before Profit TD claims the creation of the super junior positions is “stroke politics” created to “spread around the spoils of office”.
He said: “This speaks volumes about the approach of the government which is that ‘rules are not for us, they are for you and we will simply try to get around those rules’.
“We want to oppose the stroke politics of this government in every possible arena that we can and that’s why I initiated a plenary action in the High Court seeking an injunction preventing the super juniors from attending cabinet meetings and seeking an end to the extra allowances that they get paid.”
The use of super junior ministers has been part of the past several governments with Deputy Murphy saying he regrets not taking the legal case sooner as he confessed: “It’s better late than never”.
