The Dáil will vote today on whether or not to accept new speaking time arrangements.
It brings the long running controversy to a head.
It’s more than two months since this row delayed the election of a Taoiseach and there’s been little change on either side.
The coalition voted through changes to give more speaking time to backbenchers including Michael Lowry and his independents, as well as cutting the amount of overall time the Taoiseach takes questions in the Dáil chamber.
The government says it’s to give a voice to its backbenchers.
The opposition says it’s coalition TDs trying to have their cake and eat it too.
They say it will diminish the ability of opposition to hold the government to account.
Opposition parties say they won’t cooperate with pairing arrangements for Ministers and will keep all options of protest on the table.
But at the end of the day, the government has the numbers and while we may see a lot of heat around the vote, it’s only going one way.
On Tipp Today last week Deputy Michael Lowry said he hoped the situation would be sorted out once and for all today.
He told Fran Curry that the opposition parties were putting a spin on the situation and said it was never the Regional Independent groups plan to take speaking time away from the likes of Sinn Féin and Labour.
“These changes have to be made to accommodate the members who are neither opposition or government – who are in the middle effectively.
“We never looked for opposition time – what we looked for is time to contribute.
“Effectively what has happened here is Sinn Féin and Labour want to punish our Regional Group for supporting the formation of the government. In vengeance they want to disenfranchise us, they want to muzzle us, they want to deny us an entitlement to participate in Dáil proceedings.”
