Government Chief Whip and Minister of State with responsibility for mental health, Mary Butler, has voiced strong criticism of a High Court case that could affect her role at Cabinet level.<\/p>\n
The case, brought by Sinn F\u00e9in TD Pa Daly and People Before Profit TD Paul Murphy, challenges the number of ministers permitted to sit at Cabinet.<\/p>\n
Under the Constitution, only fifteen ministers are allowed to attend Cabinet, and if the challenge is successful, Ministers of State could be excluded.<\/p>\n
Speaking on Deise Today ahead of the hearing, Minister Butler said she is angry about the case and its potential consequences.<\/p>\n
She highlighted that she is the first woman from Waterford to sit at Cabinet and stressed the significance of mental health having a standalone voice at the highest level of government.<\/p>\n
Minister Butler said this level of representation for mental health does not exist anywhere else in Europe.<\/p>\n
She warned that the court action could result in mental health being removed from Cabinet entirely.<\/p>\n
She also questioned why opposition TDs would seek to remove such an important portfolio from Cabinet, describing the case as a political stroke rather than a move driven by concern for governance.<\/p>\n
The High Court is expected to deliver its decision on the case later today, with the outcome due at 2pm.<\/p>\n
For the latest Waterford\u00a0News<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Sport<\/a>,\u00a0<\/a>tune into WLR News on the hour and download the WLR App for news on demand<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Government Chief Whip and Minister of State with responsibility for mental health, Mary Butler, has voiced strong criticism…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":200337,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[103,61,60,106063,410,411],"class_list":{"0":"post-200336","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland","11":"tag-mary-butler-high-court-case","12":"tag-mental-health","13":"tag-mentalhealth"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200336","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=200336"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200336\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/200337"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=200336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=200336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=200336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}