Government of Ireland

The Government of Ireland (Rialtas na hÉireann) is the cabinet that exercises executive authority in Ireland. The Constitution of Ireland vests executive authority in a government which is headed by the Taoiseach, the head of government. The government is composed of ministers, each of whom must be a member of the Oireachtas, which consists of Dáil Éireann and Seanad Éireann. The Taoiseach must be nominated by the Dáil, the house of representatives. Following the nomination of the Dáil, the President of Ireland appoints the Taoiseach to their role. The President also appoints members of the government, including the Tánaiste, the deputy head of government, on the nomination of the Taoiseach and their approval by the Dáil. The government is dependent on the Oireachtas to pass primary legislation and as such, the government needs to command a majority in the Dáil in order to ensure support and confidence for budgets and government bills to pass. The Government is also known as the cabinet. The current government took office on 17 December 2022 with Leo Varadkar, leader of Fine Gael, as Taoiseach. The Tánaiste is Micheál Martin, leader of Fianna Fáil. It is a majority coalition government of Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Green Party. It was formed after protracted government negotiations following a general election on 8 February 2020. Membership of the cabinet is regulated by Article 28 of the Constitution of Ireland and by the Ministers and Secretaries Acts 1924 to 2017. The Constitution requires the government to consist of between seven and fifteen members, all of whom must be a member of the Oireachtas. Since the formation of the 12th Government of Ireland in 1966, all Irish cabinets have been formed with the constitutional maximum of fifteen ministers. The total sometimes falls below this number for brief periods following the resignation of individual ministers or the withdrawal of a party from a coalition. No more than two members of the cabinet may be members of Seanad Éireann.

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Related concepts (4)

Irish language

Irish (Standard Irish: Gaeilge), also known as Gaelic 'geilIk, is a Goidelic language of the Insular Celtic branch of the Celtic language family, which is a part of the Indo-European language family. Irish is indigenous to the island of Ireland and was the population's first language until the 19th century, when English gradually became dominant, particularly in the last decades of the century. Today, Irish is still commonly spoken as a first language in areas of Ireland collectively known as the Gaeltacht, in which only 2% of Ireland's population lived in 2016.

Republic of Ireland

Ireland (Éire ˈeːɾjə), also known as the Republic of Ireland (Poblacht na hÉireann), is a country in north-western Europe consisting of 26 of the 32 counties of the island of Ireland. The capital and largest city is Dublin, on the eastern side of the island. Around 2.1 million of the country's population of 5.15 million people reside in the Greater Dublin Area. The sovereign state shares its only land border with Northern Ireland, which is part of the United Kingdom.

Government of Ireland