MICHAEL LOWRY HAS rejected a call from opposition parties to exclude the Independent TDs propping up the government from asking questions during Leaders’ Questions in the Dáil.

The row over speaking rights in the chamber, which is rooted in whether the Independents backing the government will be allowed to speak during time allocated to opposition parties, has spilled over into a stalemate over Leaders’ Questions.

The Leaders’ Questions slot in the Dáil is for leaders of opposition parties (or a representative) to ask questions to the Taoiseach (or, if they are unavailable, another member of Government).

Opposition leaders including Sinn Féin’s Mary Lou McDonald are insisting that Independents who were involved in negotiating the Programme for Government should not be treated as a opposition group for the purpose of Leaders’ Questions.

Nine Independent TDs support the Fianna Fail-Fine Gael government – seven from the Regional Independent Group and Kerry TDs Michael and Danny Healy-Rae.

Five of the nine have been appointed as ministers of state. The other four, including Michael Lowry who led the group in the Programme for Government negotiations, want to be part of a Dáil technical group that would give them speaking slots during opposition time.

The government has proposed a “hybrid” technical group in the Dáil that would allow its members to either support the coalition or not.

Opposition parties have shot this down.

Lowry, however, has said that excluding his group from asking questions during Leaders’ Questions would be unacceptable, leaving the two sides at an impasse with only two days left until the Dáil is due to sit again.

If the issue is not resolved before then, there could be more raucous scenes in the Dáil on Wednesday.

Speaking on RTÉ Radio One’s Morning Ireland this morning, Labour TD Duncan Smith said anger from opposition parties over the matter “hasn’t diluted in any way”.

“We’re not ruling anything out. I don’t want this to be a threat, but it’s now at leaders’ level,” Smith said, adding that opposition leaders “are trying to get the Taoiseach and Tánaiste to engage on this”.

“It was stated in the Dáil that there is an ambiguity on standing orders, so the government have admitted to that. Unfortunately, that seems to have been fudged to get the Taoiseach elected and they are going to push through this ruling which will put Michael Lowry in de-facto opposition,” he said.

“That is absolutely unacceptable to us,” Smith said, adding that it has been a “deeply frustrating two weeks for us in opposition”.

Yesterday, Sinn Féin’s Mary Lou McDonald described the government’s proposed solution as a “nonsense”, “farce” and an “insult to democracy”.

She made clear she would not accept any arrangement that would allow Lowry to ask questions during Leaders’ Questions.

Speaking at the European Union Leaders’ Retreat, Taoiseach Micheál Martin said he was “somewhat surprised” by the views of some people in opposition on the matter.

He said the Dáil has an obligation to form a government.

“Groups have a right to form … I’m worried about the Sinn Féin approach that it’s either this or nothing, and Sinn Féin saying you can’t form a group.

“No one ever said that the late Tony Gregory was a member of government, even though he supported a government at the time.

“The Fianna Fáil confidence and supply arrangement with Fine Gael, we negotiated some of that programme for government and we also negotiated budgets … people would say it was good that we had a government that was stable during the Brexit crisis.”

Martin said the issue of speaking rights is ”not as black and white as has been articulated”.

Additional reporting by Press Association