Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has warned his TDs that they will face a general election if the Government keeps losing important Dáil votes.
Mr Varadkar made the comments at the weekly meeting of the Fine Gael parliamentary party on Wednesday night, after a Government loss on Tuesday evening.
It lost a vote on the Dublin Airport Noise Bill, even with Fianna Fáil abstention. Sources at the party meeting said Mr Varadkar warned his deputies they would need to get their canvass cards or leaflets ready if they continued with such behaviour.
One TD characterised Mr Varadkar’s warning as: “You better have your leaflets ready if you are going to do that.”
Another relayed the Taoiseach’s comments as: “If it is going to carry in the same vein, well then have the canvass cards ready.”
“A number of them went into the soccer match,” another TD said of some of his Dáil colleagues, in reference to the Ireland versus Georgia soccer match that was on in the Aviva Stadium at the same time as the vote.
It is understood that it was clarified by Government Chief Whip Sean Kyne and others at the meeting that the loss arose because of a misunderstanding about Dáil timings.
TDs had been told not to expect any votes after 8pm on Tuesday, but the House’s business earlier that day ran longer than expected, pushing the vote back to around 8.15pm.
The Government lost by 34 votes to 29, with three abstentions. The Taoiseach himself voted. Mr Varadkar last year said he would not call an election this year, but said a test of the Government’s survival was whether it could deliver and could govern.
“I’m not going to rush into an election for opportunistic reasons just because the polls look good and I hope after one and a half years in office people believe me when I say that,” he said.
“But the key test is: can you actually deliver? Can you get your legislative programme through? Can you get your policies implemented?”
“And so far in co-operation with Fianna Fáil we’ve been able to do that. But there are many reasons why that may change.”
