Byrne faces ‘quiet demotion’ after mugging Murphy

Fine Gael plan to punish rebel minister at next reshuff le

MINISTER Catherine Byrne will be demoted in next year’s reshuffle as punishment for her undermining of Housing Minister Eoghan Murphy, the Irish Mail on Sunday has learned.

Cabinet members said last night that, despite widespread fury in Fine Gael over the rebel minister’s behaviour, a quiet demotion next year is the only punishment available to Leo Varadkar, as the leader of a minority Government.

Ms Byrne has challenged the authority of Mr Murphy, Mr Varadkar’s closest ally in Cabinet, twice in the space of a month. The Junior Health Minister has been at loggerheads with her superiors for almost three years. Fine Gael colleagues referred the MoS to a 2016 report into the party’s general election failure which said handling Ms Byrne had taken ‘up a lot of emotional effort and time’.

Ministers and TDs were furious with her latest actions. One TD said: ‘I told Leo he should just sack her now, she is just not worth the trouble. There is a fear in the party hierarchy that she would resign the whip and leave us in grave difficulty in the Dáil. So it looks like that course of action is out.’

However, a Cabinet minister said last night the compromise course of action is to demote Ms Byrne from her ministry at the next most opportune moment.

‘The Taoiseach has said he will conduct a reshuffle next summer if we are still in Government,’ said the minister, ‘so we will just demote her then with a nice, reasonable explanation. We may be closer to a general election by then and might be able to better handle the loss of a vote in the Dáil.’

There is always the fear in a minority Government, where votes are invariably tight on contentious issues, that an unhappy or demoted TD will vote against the whip.

Ms Byrne had allowed speculation reach fever point over whether she would back the Government in a no-confidence motion Sinn Féin had tabled in Minister Murphy on Tuesday.

After a number of discussions with Mr Murphy, and a meeting with the Taoiseach, she finally voted with the Government.

After the vote, which the Government comfortably won with the agreed abstention of Fianna Fáil, Mr Murphy said: ‘Catherine saw that this was a Sinn Féin stunt that wasn’t going to do anything for anyone in her constituency, and so she didn’t support it. She supported me, her Government colleague, as Minister for Housing.

‘She gave me her support last night in a vote, and she gave it to me personally as well in her words,’ he added.

In July, at an event in Richmond Barracks, Mr Murphy announced plans for St Michael’s Estate in Ms Byrne’s constituency.

The plan would see the construction of 470 homes, 30 of which would be used for social housing. The remainder would be available on a cost rental basis to low- and middle-income workers, earning up to €50,000 or €75,000 as a couple, at between 15% and 25% below market rates.

Ms Byrne, who was not an invited speaker at the event, nevertheless spoke and said that the plans to build rental housing for low- and middle-income workers, instead of affordable homes which could be bought, would ‘destroy’ the local community. ‘It’s probably one of the worst plans I’ve seen put forward for this site,’ she said.

Yesterday Mr Murphy said ‘I don’t have anything further to add on Catherine... sorry.’

Ms Byrne did not respond to phone calls or texts and the Fine Gael press office said she would not comment. A post-2016 election internal Fine Gael review said Ms Byrne ‘required a lot of skill’ to be handled during the campaign and the party will ‘struggle’ to hold her seat at the next election.

The claims were made in a review of Ms Byrne’s Dublin South Central constituency, prepared for the Fine Gael executive council. Reviews of all constituencies were eventually carried out. In the report, which was first published in the Irish Times, Ms Byrne was said to have been ‘initially fearful of canvassing and not very confident’.

The retention of the Fine Gael seat was credited to a big transfer from Labour which is unlikely to be repeated at the next election. Fianna Fáil’s Catherine Ardagh, who narrowly lost out on a seat, is seen as big threat.

There is a serious ‘succession issue’ with Ms Byrne, who will favour her daughter or another candidate to succeed her, the report also claimed.

Challenged Murphy twice in the space of a month ‘Struggle to hold her seat at next election’