A Government motion of confidence in Tánaiste Simon Harris will be debated and voted on in the Dáil this afternoon.
The move by the Government pre-empts an Aontú plan to table a no-confidence motion in Mr Harris next week.
Aontú leader Peadar Tóibín has said that Mr Harris had failed significantly to deliver on the promise he made when he was Minister for Health, that children would not wait longer than four months for a scoliosis operation.
He spoke too about what he termed a "crisis" in Children's Health Ireland and the death of nine-year-old Harvey Morrison during the summer.
Harvey, who had spina bifida and scoliosis, died in July and he had experienced many delays in accessing urgent scoliosis surgery over the course of his life.
Mr Harris and Minister for Health Jennifer Carroll MacNeill met Harvey's parents in recent weeks.
The Government has the numbers to comfortably vote through this confidence motion but not before its record on children's heath is severely criticised by the Opposition in the Dáil this evening.
