{"id":504925,"date":"2026-06-17T21:21:08","date_gmt":"2026-06-17T21:21:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/504925\/"},"modified":"2026-06-17T21:21:08","modified_gmt":"2026-06-17T21:21:08","slug":"garret-ahearn-appointed-leader-of-seanad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/504925\/","title":{"rendered":"Garret Ahearn appointed leader of Seanad"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Senator Garret Ahearn has been appointed as the leader of the Seanad.<\/p>\n<p>T\u00e1naiste Simon Harris appointed Mr Ahearn to the position after the former Seanad leader, Fine Gael&#8217;s Se\u00e1n Kyne, was elected to D\u00e1il \u00c9ireann last month.<\/p>\n<p>Mr Ahearn, who hails from Tipperary, is the son of the late Theresa Ahearn, who was a Fine Gael TD for the Tipperary South constituency from 1989 to 2000.<\/p>\n<p>He has been a senator since 2020 and was previously a member of Tipperary County Council. He was the Mayor of Clonmel from 2019 to 2020.<\/p>\n<p>Senator Cathal Byrne has taken up the role of Seanad Government Chief Whip.<\/p>\n<p>Mr Harris said Mr Ahearn &#8220;understands and appreciates the skills required&#8221; for the role, which acts as the main Government spokesperson in the Seanad.<\/p>\n<p>The T\u00e1naiste also paid tribute to Mr Byrne, describing him as a &#8220;strong and reliable public representative&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Mr Ahearn said he was &#8220;deeply honoured&#8221; following his appointment.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I look forward to working with colleagues from all parties and none to ensure the Seanad continues to make a meaningful contribution to public life,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Senator Garret Ahearn has been appointed as the leader of the Seanad. T\u00e1naiste Simon Harris appointed Mr Ahearn&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":504926,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":["post-504925","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504925","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=504925"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504925\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/504926"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=504925"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=504925"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=504925"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}