The cabinet is composed of ministers, each of whom must be either a TD or senator, and has a minimum of seven and a maximum of 15 members.
The taoiseach, tánaiste and minister for finance must be TDs, while the Constitution allows two senators to be members of the government.
Senior ministers sit at cabinet meetings, where decisions about government policy and proposals for government legislation are made.
Each senior government minister is responsible for running and managing the department they have been allocated. There are currently 18 government departments.
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The minister may also suggest and propose new or amended legislation to the government relating to matters that arise in their department.
As well as each cabinet minister, the taoiseach may appoint junior ministers or ministers of state to help run departments. For example, Helen McEntee is the Minister for Justice while James Browne is the Minister of State at the Department of Justice.
A minister of state does not attend cabinet meetings. However, the government chief whip is a minister of state at the Department of the Taoiseach and does attend cabinet meetings.
The current Chief Whip is Hildegarde Naughton and her role is to set the schedule of business to be taken in the Dáil and to manage the Government’s Legislation Programme through the House. The job also involves ensuring the attendance of Government deputies and Ministers for votes.
Since the rainbow coalition of Fine Gael, Labour and the Democratic Left in 1994, several governments, including the outgoing one, have appointed additional ministers of state with permission to attend cabinet meetings.
Such ministers have a seat at the top table in government and receive cabinet papers but do not have the same clout as senior ministers, who have responsibility for full government departments.
[ ‘It has been intense’: Inside the room of Government formationOpens in new window ]
Ministers of state attending cabinet, other than the chief whip, are often described as super junior ministers or super juniors. Up to three ministers of state attending cabinet may receive an allowance.
The super junior ministers in the outgoing Government include Naughton, Dara Calleary and Pippa Hackett.
The Government was heavily criticised during the summer of 2020 and in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic when it decided to allow a third super junior minister to receive the annual allowance of €16,288.
In the previous 2016-20 government, the third super junior, then minister of state for higher education Mary Mitchell O’Connor, was unable to receive the extra salary.
The three super junior ministers at the time (Naughton, Hackett and Jack Chambers) decided to waive and gift back the increased allowance, sharing €32,000 of allowances between the three of them rather than getting €16,000 each.
Each department employs civil servants, including a secretary general, who remain in their positions regardless of changes in the government.
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