Date formed 9 March 2011 Head of government Enda Kenny | Date dissolved 10 March 2016 No. of ministers 15 | |
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Deputy head of government Eamon Gilmore (2011–14)
Joan Burton (2014–16) Head of state Mary McAleese (2011)
Michael D. Higgins (2011–16) | ||
The Government of the 31st Dáil is the previous Government of Ireland, formed after the 2011 general election to Dáil Éireann on 25 February 2011. Fine Gael entered into discussions with the Labour Party which culminated in a joint programme for government. The 31st Dáil first met on 9 March 2011 when it nominated Seán Barrett to be the Ceann Comhairle. Following this, the house nominated Enda Kenny, the leader of Fine Gael, to be the 13th Taoiseach. Kenny then went to the Áras an Uachtaráin where President Mary McAleese appointed him as Taoiseach. On the nomination of the Taoiseach, and following the Dáil's approval the 29th Government of Ireland was appointed by the President.
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29th Government of Ireland
The 29th Government of Ireland (9 March 2011 – 10 March 2016) was composed of Fine Gael and the Labour Party.
Composition
The following attend cabinet meetings, but do not have a vote:
The government positions are listed in alphabetical order, rather than in terms of seniority.
Economic Management Council
The Economic Management Council was a cabinet subcommittee of senior ministers formed to co-ordinate the response to the Irish financial crisis and the government's dealings with the troika (European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund). Its members were the Taoiseach, the Tánaiste, the Minister for Finance, and the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform. It was supported by the Department of the Taoiseach, led by Dermot McCarthy. Brigid Laffan compared it to a war cabinet. Opposition parties suggested the Council represented a dangerous concentration of power.
Following the formation of a government in 2016, Shane Ross, a member of the Government of the 32nd Dáil, confirmed in an address to the Dáil that the subcommittee would not form part of the new government. Ross told the Dáil on 6 May 2016: "I had a conversation last night with the Taoiseach. I was talking to him about Dáil reform and I asked him about an issue - a last point I had forgotten to ask about earlier - which was the abolition of the Economic Management Council. I thought it was going to be like one of these thorny topics which we had been through over the last few weeks. He told me okay, it is gone, that it had been needed for a particular time and it is not needed any more and I was to consider it gone. To me that was very encouraging because it meant that one of those obstacles to Dáil reform, one of those rather secretive bodies that had dictated to the Cabinet and to the Dáil the agenda of what came out to the country, was now a thing of the past."