Independent TD Michael Healy-Rae told Radio Kerry this morning that he believes his brother Danny's words cost him his job as a minister of state at the Department of Agriculture.
Michael highlighted Danny's comments in the aftermath of the fuel protests that Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael TDs should call for the removal of their party leaders, as a reason for the loss of his role in the department.
Political Correspondent Mícheál Lehane reflects on where the brother's latest interview leaves the Healy-Rae political movement.
Michael Healy-Rae's interview with Jerry O'Sullivan on Radio Kerry this morning was extraordinary.
Yes, he is rarely shy to speak, but typically he is guarded, albeit in a well-practiced, affable manner, when it comes to revealing how the Healy-Raes operate.
Today was different.
This was an honest dispatch from the inner workings of a political machine still creaking from the effects of a dramatic ministerial resignation and a severing of its ties with the Government.
Michael Healy-Rae has cut a sore and wounded figure on his return to Leinster House after that shock decision in April.
Or as they might say in south Kerry, he looked "very shook".
As he contemplated how to put things back together and return to the role of backbench TD, there was obviously a need for catharsis first.
Now, he has levelled damning political charges against his brother to explain how events unfolded in the hours leading up to his resignation as a junior minister for agriculture.
In the first draft of this piece of Dáil history, Michael Healy-Rae had spoken about the sight of grown men crying over the cost of fuel in The Plough Bar in Milltown in mid Kerry.
At the time he indicated that this made an exit from ministerial office inevitable.
Watch: Moment Michael Healy-Rae tendered resignation as minister of state in Dáil
But it seems the main fuse was set alight by Danny Healy-Rae's comments that Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael TDs should pull the plug on their leaders.
Those words all but ended the deal the Healy-Raes had negotiated with the Government parties early in 2025, Michael believes.
Michael states that he did everything he could to repair the damage, but the knockout blow had been landed by Danny.
It has left him with clear conclusions.
Firstly, he feels that his departure from the Department of Agriculture will reduce Kerry's influence in Government and the responsibility for this rests with his brother.
Furthermore, he will never again walk side by side into an agreement with someone who does not have the "political determination" to see it through.
Is this a polite way of effectively saying, I don't trust you brother?
For his part Danny Healy-Rae is not willing to comment directly on Michael's hard-hitting interview, but his mood seems defiant.
He is adamant that the show must go on and insists the collective Healy-Rae family continue to work at full tilt to serve their constituents.
The reality is though that after today there is a splintering of that once famously disciplined collective.
