The 34th Dáil, elected at the 2024 general election, marks its one-year anniversary on Thursday.
The current Fianna Fáil-Fine Gael Coalition has been one of the least productive governments in recent memory, measured by legislation passed in a first year.
Last Wednesday, President Catherine Connolly signed two Bills into law: the Courts and Civil Law Bill 2025 and the Health Insurance (Amendment) Bill 2025.
The workflow of Bills for the new President is in stark contrast to her predecessor Michael D Higgins. In July 2021, he complained of an “overwhelming number of Bills” being presented in the final two weeks before the Christmas and summer Dáil recesses.
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Twenty-one of the 32 Bills he considered in 2020 were presented in those periods.
If Higgins faced a torrent, Connolly has encountered a trickle since assuming office.
The two Bills enacted last week has brought the total number of new Acts to 14 so far this year, with a probable 18-20 expected by the end of the year.
This has been the lowest volume of legislation enacted by a new Government in its first year of office this century.
It compares with 32 Acts passed in 2020, the first year of the coalition between Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, and the Greens.
In 2016, despite it taking four months after the February election for a minority government to be formed, 22 Bills were enacted that year.
In 2011, the Fine Gael and Labour coalition passed 42 Acts. The Fianna Fáil and Green coalition passed the same number in 2007. In 2002, another election year, there were 34 Acts.
The apparent dearth of new legislation passed by the Coalition this year – compared with previous governments in their first year in power – has been seized upon by the Opposition.
“The new Coalition has earned its reputation as a do-nothing Government,” says Green Party leader Roderic O’Gorman, who was a minister in the last coalition.
“The lack of laws passed is striking compared with the previous government.”
Independent Senator Michael McDowell says: “We have a caretaker Government – low battery, low energy, low ambition. The massive, useless Planning and Development Act says all that has to be said about them. We are in the political doldrums.”
Most of the 14 Bills enacted so far in 2025 are relatively minor. Some give effect to EU directives or align the law with Supreme Court decisions.
One of the early Acts was to allow the increase in the number of ministers of State from 20 to 23. Another has increased the number of judges in all courts. Another, a technical Act, allows for higher valuation of homes for local property tax.
A planning Act provided for changes announced by Minister for Housing James Browne to the rent pressure zones (RPZ) policy. In contrast, while there were six Covid or Brexit-related Bills in 2020, the large number of other Acts reflected a more activist legislative agenda.
“You could see that shift towards the end of the last government,” says O’Gorman, a member of that 2020 coalition that passed a high volume of legislation in its first four years.
“With Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael taken over by a paralysis of hyper-cautiousness, it became increasingly harder for the Greens to drive through big items without significant resistance.”
He says both parties have continued this approach into 2025 and have shown little appetite for reform.
Sinn Féin whip Pádraig Mac Lochlainn highlights a “simple” Bill published in 2024 to help families living in homes with defective blocks, which was agreed by all parties. It took 14 months for it to be enacted.
“It’s a go-slow, a lethargic mentality,” he says. “For a long period of time this year, there was no legislation. Only in the last few weeks has it picked up.”
Among the Bills yet to come before the Dáil – or yet to be published – are some of the most contentious. They include the Occupied Territories Bill, which aims to ban trade with illegal Israeli settlements, and the Defence Bill to abolish the triple lock that guarantees no more than 12 Irish soldiers can be sent into war zones without approval from the Government, the Dáil and the United Nations.
Then there is the behemoth of a Bill giving effect to the EU Migration and Asylum Pact that overhauls the management of migration, the strategic emergency gas legislation, which would allow storage of liquefied natural gas, and the Bill to give effect to the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) deal with Canada.
Mac Lochlainn says he expects the Coalition to “drag its heels” in 2026.
Social Democrats whip Cian O’Callaghan has a similar view: “The new Government is a continuation of the one beforehand; they seem to be running out of steam.”
O’Callaghan contends the Coalition has been reactive and short of ideas.
“There is very little coming through. A lot of Dáil time in the last year was on statements. Even if you look at the legislation, a lot of it is the standard stuff, like the Finance Bill, the Appropriations Bill,” he says.
He argues the Government doesn’t really know what it wants to achieve.
O’Gorman agrees: “Without leaders who can agree on fundamental reforms, a fundamental direction, you’re just going to get a stalemate at every leaders’ meeting, every Cabinet subcommittee.”
The Government rejects these arguments, claiming the low number of Acts is down to a combination of a delay in setting up committees and new Ministers finding their feet.
Government figures insist that although it has not been a productive year for legislation, it is not as bad as the Opposition is making out.
As the Government sees it, the factors behind the lower legislative productivity include delays over Government formation, long delays in forming Oireachtas committees and new Ministers becoming familiar with their briefs.
A spokesperson for the Government Chief Whip said the Government has signed 14 Acts, as of December 10th, and it expected further legislation to go to the President in the coming two weeks that “should bring the end-of-year total to 20 Acts”.
“This is not out of line with first-year totals for recent governments,” the spokesperson said.
“Legislation enacted is in line with the programme for government commitment to continue to support families and communities.”
Eoin O’Malley, a politics professor at Dublin City University, says legislation passed in the first year is probably a better metric than examining what’s happened in the first 100 days of government.
He qualifies it by saying it is a partial and not-perfect measure because governments do far more than pass primary legislation.
That said, O’Malley suggests the low level of enacted legislation in 2025 “probably chimes with the idea this is a Government that hasn’t really found its feet and got into a rhythm”.
