Aontú leader Peadar Tóibín has said his party will think “long and hard over the next 24 hours” about whether to bring a further Dáil motion next week after Tánaiste Simon Harris won a confidence motion by 94 votes to 65.
There was one abstention, by Independent TD Paul Gogarty.
The Government pre-empted an Aontú proposal on Tuesday to bring a motion of no confidence in Mr Harris by instead bringing forward a motion of confidence.
Mr Tóibín proposed the motion over Mr Harris’s “failed promise” in 2017 that no child would have to wait more than four months for scoliosis surgery, in the wake of the death of nine-year-old Harvey Morrison Sherratt.
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Mr Tóibín said after the vote: “This is a very, very serious issue and we will pull every single lever possible to put as much pressure on the Government so that this is fixed.”
They did not want to “replicate exactly the same hackneyed debates in the Dáil either, from the Government’s perspective”.
They may bring a motion “but we won’t come to a decision until at least Thursday night or maybe Friday morning”.
Opening the debate, Taoiseach Micheál Martin paid tribute to Harvey’s parents and said the Government has to do better. He acknowledged Mr Tóibín’s genuine concern but said such motions “do not in and of themselves provide services”.
Every effort is being made to reduce waiting times for spinal surgery for children, Mr Martin said and he described the Tánaiste as “an active and steadfast partner” and a “diligent, very dedicated and effective Minister” who was helping to lead the country through perilous times.
The Tánaiste said “I have never claimed to be infallible, but I do act in good faith. And when I make mistakes and when I err, I acknowledge them.”
He added: “I don’t always get everything right but let us distinguish scrutiny from cynicism and accountability from opportunism.”
Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald told him “I have no confidence in you. The families you have let down have no confidence in you.”
“The wider public increasingly ... have no confidence in you either. And God hurry the day that they get to remove you from power.”
Ms McDonald described the Government’s motion of confidence as “cynically designed to intercept and shut down a prospective motion of no confidence” in Mr Harris and “to shield him from being held to account for his litany of failures, but primarily, his profound failure of children with scoliosis and spina bifida”.
In the debate Mr Tóibín said: “If the death of a child, if the continuous painful suffering a child, of hundreds of children, if the disablement of hundreds of children is not reason enough for a motion of confidence, what the hell is?”
He told the Dáil he had pledged following the death of Harvey Morrison Sherratt, to introduce of a motion of no confidence at the earliest opportunity and this was next week.
He added: “If continuous dysfunction of an organisation for well over a decade”, that led “to all of this harm” and the relationship of the organisation and the minister for health “is not reason enough to bring a motion of no confidence, then what the hell is”.
Independent Ireland TD Ken O’Flynn said however that “this battering of one another “does nothing to help this family. It does nothing to ensure that no other child will suffer what Harvey went through.”
