By Padraic Halpin
DUBLIN (Reuters) -Jack Chambers will be Ireland’s next finance minister, Deputy Prime Minister Micheal Martin said on Tuesday, handing a junior minister the task of crafting the coalition’s final budget before an election due within months.
Chambers will be the first finance chief in over 40 years to take on the role without previous senior ministerial experience, and aged 33, will become the youngest finance minister since Irish revolutionary leader Michael Collins just over a century ago.
He replaces Ireland’s European Commission nominee Michael McGrath, who made a pitch on Tuesday for an economic portfolio in the EU’s next executive if his nomination is confirmed by the European Parliament.
“Jack is a very able, intelligent, highly effective politician and I have no doubt that he will make a very effective minister for finance,” Martin told a press conference.
Chambers, a qualified doctor, has sat at cabinet since 2020 in various junior ministerial roles and was named as his Fianna Fail party’s deputy leader last week following his recent success as director of elections for local council polls.
He was elected to parliament for the first time in 2016 at the age of 25 and has also served as government chief whip.
He will have just over three months to craft the key pre-election package of tax cuts and spending increases alongside public expenditure minister and former finance chief Paschal Donohoe, who has helped negotiate the last eight budgets.
The next election must be held by March 2025, but analysts expect the government to hold it after the budget.
Donohoe and McGrath’s budgetary partnership has been central to the government’s stability. McGrath was public spending minister for 2-1/2 years before swapping with Donohoe and taking over the finance brief in December 2022.
McGrath was responsible for setting up a new sovereign wealth fund the government hopes to grow to around 100 billion euros ($107 billion) over the next decade to ease future healthcare, pension and climate costs.
“The background that I have, my own (accountancy) qualifications, my political experience all lie in the broad economic and financial area and that would seem to be an obvious area where my skills can be deployed,” McGrath said when asked which commission portfolio he would push for.
($1 = 0.9343 euros)
(Reporting by Padraic Halpin and Sachin Ravikumar; editing by Sarah Young, Kylie MacLellan and Emelia Sithole-Matarise)
