Former Labour junior minister Willie Penrose has said that it was "self-evident" party leader Eamon Gilmore must leave the Department of Foreign Affairs for a new ministry.

Mr Penrose maintained that Mr Gilmore should have chosen an economic ministry “from the beginning”.

He declined to endorse Mr Gilmore when pressed, saying that he would discuss the matter in-house within the Labour Party. However he added: “We are all in this together. The Australian Labour party changed their leader before the election and it didn’t do any good. Now is the time to steady the ship.”

Mr Penrose maintained Labour was paying the price for not being the “very cute boyos” who could have ducked out of the responsibilities of Government after the 2011 elections.

“I don’t come from a family of cowards. We were always people who fought to the bitter end for what we believed in. It’s very easy to adapt a cowardly attitude.”

In an impassioned interview on Shannonside FM, he said: “It’s very easy on the outside when you are protesting. You can be anti-everything. You can be anti-property charge though that was imposed, you can be anti-water charges though that was imposed, you can be anti-everything and you can call for the provision of additional public services and you can do all that and still call for tax reductions. How can you square that circle?”

Mr Penrose, who was previously a junior housing minister before resigning over the closure of Mullingar barracks in 2011, said it was now time for the Labour Party to bring forward a major house building programme to deal with the 100,000 people on housing waiting lists.

If necessary that should involve “off-balance sheet methods” of bringing forward a house construction programme to get around the constraints of the 3 per cent ceiling on the debt to GDP ratio, he said.