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Ireland’s parliament has succeeded in electing Micheál Martin as Taoiseach after a delay caused by unprecedented chaos in the chamber, kicking off a new government bracing for US trade challenges.
The centrist Fianna Fáil leader’s coalition is preparing an “all-out diplomatic and trade offensive” to persuade US President Donald Trump to back off from his tax and tariff threats against the EU country where many large US technology and pharmaceutical companies are based.
“By any reasonable measure, this is a challenging moment in world history,” Martin said on Thursday after being elected by 95 votes to 76. He was later formally appointed by President Michael D Higgins.
“Ireland is an open democracy with an open economy — we cannot expect to stand unaffected on the sidelines,” Martin said in the Dáil, Ireland’s parliament, vowing to “protect and renew an economic model which delivers high employment and resources for public services” and to strengthen ties with Europe, the UK and the US.
Focusing on relations with Trump, he added: “Our relationship of kinship with the United States is older than our state. It has endured because we have continued to renew bonds of respect and co-operation.”
After a day of political tempest, a real one cut the proceedings short to allow deputies to shelter at home before Storm Éowyn was set to make landfall early on Friday, in what is expected to be one of the most severe weather fronts ever to hit Ireland.
Martin, who already served as premier between 2020 and 2022, will be taking over from Simon Harris, leader of his centre-right coalition partner Fine Gael. Harris will swap places to become foreign minister with additional responsibility for trade. The two men will rotate jobs again in late 2027.
The investiture was delayed on Wednesday when the opposition rebelled in the Dáil, sparking shouting matches and culminating in proceedings being abandoned after hours of uproar.
The dispute centred on whether independent deputies who support Martin’s coalition should be allowed to sit with a group that would give them some of the opposition’s allotted speaking time.
A visibly furious Martin blasted the scenes as “stunt politics on speed”, given it prevented a premier from being voted into office for the first time. He said this amounted to the “subversion of the Irish constitution”.
Opposition leader Mary Lou McDonald, of the nationalist Sinn Féin party, hit back at the government, accusing it of “incredible arrogance” and trying to “ride roughshod over the collective opposition”.
Martin and Harris clinched the support of the so-called Regional Independent Group to secure a comfortable Dáil majority after last November’s election and were set to award it four junior ministerial roles.
But RIG members who will not hold ministerial posts joined an opposition Dáil group, prompting accusations that they were allowed to sit in government and opposition at the same time.
RIG group leader Michael Lowry is already a controversial figure: a former Fine Gael minister, he was described as “profoundly corrupt” by a tribunal in 2011, which found he passed information to help a businessman secure a mobile phone operator’s licence. Lowry denies the findings, and both Martin and Harris have defended doing a deal with him, saying he has been democratically elected.
A truce on the issue of the RIG speaking group was reached on Thursday, with the promise of a full agreement before the Dáil reconvenes on February 5.
