Sinn Féin to table no-confidence motion in Simon Coveney next week

This has been dragging on a long time.

Sinn Fein will table a no-confidence motion in Minister for Foreign Affairs Simon Coveney when the Dáil returns next week. Earlier this week, Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald called on Taoiseach Micheál Martin to sanction Coveney and said she believes he should be sacked. But Sinn Féin has now announced its intention to bring a motion of no confidence in Coveney next week, RTÉ reported. The party said the appointment of Katherine Zappone as a UN Special Envoy for Freedom of Opinion and Expression was done without a transparent process and amounted to cronyism. The controversy has been dripping onwards for weeks with Coveney denying he effectively offered Zappone the special envoy job before his officials carried out the work to create it. He also rejected claims that her contact with him over the role amounted to lobbying. Speaking on Wednesday, McDonald said the way the appointment was handled is behaviour that is “not of the standard that would be expected of any minister of Government”. On Tuesday night, a statement was issued from a spokesperson for the Taoiseach which said the approach and process surrounding the selection of a UN special envoy was wrong and "should not have happened in the way it did". "The Minister for Foreign Affairs has apologised to the Taoiseach and Minister [Eamon] Ryan for this," the statement read. "Minister Coveney has now given his account to the Oireachtas Committee on the chronology of events that led to the appointment, joined by his former Secretary General. "That said, lessons need to be learned by the government on the handling of this issue."