INDEPENDENT TD Violet-Anne Wynne has confirmed she is resuming her Dáil pairing with Justice Minister Helen McEntee, who is currently on maternity leave.
Wynne last week broke the pairing to vote against the Government in the eviction ban motion.
When a TD has taken any leave of absence and is therefore not present to vote, they can enter an informal pairing arrangement with a TD from an opposing party who agrees not to vote and so balances out their absence.
These agreements generally only cover short-term absences, but have been implemented in the case of maternity leave in recent years.
In a statement this morning, Wynne confirmed she will be resuming her pairing with McEntee ahead of this afternoon’s no-confidence motion, tabled by Labour.
It is expected that the Government will win the motion with the support of independent TDs.
Wynne said in her statement that when she was elected to the Dáil, she “promised to fight for the people of Clare and give a voice to the voiceless”.
“In voting against the ending of the eviction ban, that is exactly what I did,” she said.
“I proudly represent 127,000 people who did not cause the financial crisis, nor did they cause the housing crisis, and they should not be forced to suffer because of it. It is not the people of Clare’s fault that when successive governments allowed social housing stock to be bought off that they never replaced it,” Wynne said.
“The government ending this eviction ban with piecemeal solutions in place that only scratch at the surface of the crisis is systemic violence and that is something I was elected to challenge and fight against – not to uphold the status quo. The handling of the housing crisis is an indictment of this government and is an abject failure,” she said.
Outlining her reasons for resuming her pairing with McEntee, Wynne said: “It is now my opinion that this week’s second eviction ban extension vote will fall, I believe that the government have bought and sold the necessary votes to do that.
“I also believe that they have traded whatever necessities required to win their confidence vote.
“I will not be in discussions with government to vote in their favour today. However, I will be resuming my pair with Minister McEntee.”
Wynne added that “the exercise of trading political blows for the majority of today will not keep a roof over the head of any family in Clare – or the rest of Ireland. At the end of today’s sitting everyone who thought that they were right when it started will still hold the same views”.
Addressing the “high volume of criticism” she faced for her decision last week, Wynne said: “Much of the criticism levelled at me last week sought to attack me as someone who was dishonest or not a person of their word. I’m quite the opposite. I am part of the system.
“I am not in the majority and therefore I do not get to make the rules. The only people who have continually forced pregnant women and young mothers into awkward pairing arrangements like this are those in power.
“This practice has to change if we want to encourage more people with young families into politics.”
She said she will bring a complementary Bill before the House in the coming months “to deal with some of the housekeeping issues that need to be ironed out with respect to maternity leave for members”.
“I want to work with any and all of my colleagues across all parties and none to make the Oireachtas a more accessible place for anyone of childbearing age, and I don’t ever want a person in future to be faced with dilemmas like the one that arose last week.”
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