PATRICK O\u2019DONOVAN WAS consulted on which Fine Gael minister would take over his portfolio, a government spokesperson has said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Enterprise Minister Peter Burke was assigned the functions of the Minister for Culture, Communications and Sport until O\u2019Donovan has recovered.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Taoiseach Miche\u00e1l Martin agreed to a request from T\u00e1naiste Simon Harris to allow Burke to take over the media minister\u2019s functions, it was confirmed today.<\/p>\n
O\u2019Donovan became ill as he hosted EU telecommunications ministers at an event in Limerick last month.<\/p>\n
Over the summer, the minister spoke about being diagnosed with epilepsy. After being treated at University Hospital Limerick, he was released and is now recovering at home.\u00a0<\/p>\n
There has been much written and speculated about a phone call that took place directly before O\u2019Donovan and Harris prior to him taking ill.<\/p>\n
Harris has staunchly denied that it was a tetchy or angry exchange.<\/p>\n
In the last week, Harris has spoken about how \u201cannoyed\u201d he was as party leader to learn that a Fine Gael minister had spoken to The Sunday Times about O\u2019Donovan\u2019s illness and future as a minister.\u00a0<\/p>\n
O\u2019Donovan called the anonymous briefing by one of his party colleagues a \u201cslap in the face\u201d.<\/p>\n
A number of ministers, such as Harris, Defence Minister Helen McEntee and Health Minister Jennifer Carroll MacNeill, have all denied they anonymously briefed The Sunday Times.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Responding to questions from the media today about whether O\u2019Donovan was consulted about what Fine Gael minister would take over his responsibilities while absent, a spokesperson said following consultation between the Taoiseach, T\u00e1naiste and Ministers O\u2019Donovan and Burke, a decision was reached that the enterprise minister would take over the brief.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A government spokesperson said:\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWhilst Minister O\u2019Donovan was consulted in relation to the reassignment of his role, the reassignment of ministerial functions was a decision of the Taoiseach following a request from the T\u00e1naiste whose prerogative it was to assign the functions to Minister Burke.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
A spokesman for Harris said O\u2019Donovan\u2019s return to work would be \u201cguided by medical advice\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The spokesman also told reporters that Harris had trust in his cabinet members and full confidence in O\u2019Donovan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PATRICK O\u2019DONOVAN WAS consulted on which Fine Gael minister would take over his portfolio, a government spokesperson has…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":674389,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[15620,42,43,13400,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-674388","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-cabinet","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-patrick-o","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/674388","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=674388"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/674388\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/674389"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=674388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=674388"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=674388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}