Irish Leader Sacks 2 Cabinet Members, Vows to Fight Ouster
Prime Minister Charles Haughey on Friday fired a second rebellious Cabinet minister and said he will fight an effort by members of the dominant party to oust him from its leadership.
Haughey fired Environment Minister Padraig Flynn. On Thursday, he sacked Finance Minister Albert Reynolds. Both had said they would support a motion of no confidence in Haughey at today’s meeting of the 77-member Fianna Fail parliamentary delegation.
It was the most serious challenge in the 66-year-old Haughey’s 12 years as party leader and four terms as prime minister. Haughey has survived three previous attempts to oust him.
Haughey’s problems have been building since he called an early election in 1989, only to have Fianna Fail lose seats. It was forced to form a coalition government.
Fianna Fail lost a presidential election last year for the first time. Haughey was forced to dismiss the party’s candidate, Brian Lenihan, from his Cabinet because of an uproar over Lenihan’s conflicting accounts of an old political scandal.
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