Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said the Minister for the Environment does not have a choice but to make a return flight from Dubai for a confidence motion in the Dáil this week.
Eamon Ryan will have to interrupt his attendance at the COP28 Climate Summit in the United Arab Emirates, but will return to the event following the vote tomorrow.
Sinn Féin tabled the motion of no confidence in Minister for Justice Helen McEntee following the Dublin riots.
The Government is confident of winning the vote.
Mr Varadkar said Mr Ryan does not have a choice as the vote is one of confidence and pairs are only offered if a TD is sick or incapacitated.
He added that Mr Ryan is also a party leader so "given the circumstances, I don't think he has any choice".
Mr Varadkar also dismissed the motion as a "stunt", adding that he does not think it is what the public wants.
The Fine Gael leader said the riots were "truly shocking" and the public want politicians from all parties to work together to improve law and order and he said the Sinn Féin motion goes against that.
'Dáil comes first'
Earlier, Mr Ryan defended the decision to fly from Dubai to Dublin and back again this week to vote in the motion of no confidence in the Minister for Justice, saying "the Dáil comes first".
Speaking at the summit, Mr Ryan said he would prefer to focus on the task but "the Dáil comes first" and that he had to vote in a confidence motion.
He said he had come out to COP28 early to be part of a European team, adding that it was disappointing to leave but "there you go".
Taoiseach Leo Varadkar described the situation as unfortunate and "not ideal".
"There are no pairs for confidence motions other than for illness, so as a result of that, Minister Ryan will have to go home and come back again," Mr Varadkar said.
The moves means the Green Party leader's carbon footprint from travelling to the summit will be doubled.
However, Mr Varadkar said "of course he will offset the emissions, we have a mechanism for doing that".
Sinn Féin TD Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire said Minister McEntee is "refusing to recognise the crisis she has presided over" and said there has been a crisis brewing in policing for some time.
Speaking on RTÉ's This Week, the Cork South Central TD said gardaí "are as frustrated as anyone" and morale is "absolutely on the floor".
Mr Ó Laoghaire said that the riots in Dublin on 23 November were "compounded by the fact that there were not enough gardaí at hand in order to support their colleagues".
Speaking on the same programme, Minister of State Peter Burke said the Government has to use all the mechanisms at its disposal to get more gardai into the system.
He said the Policing Authority will look at what happened in the city centre last month and the Government will respond to any recommendations that may be made.
Earlier, the Chairman of the Policing Authority said that statements or expressions of no confidence by politicians or others at any time, but particularly now, were unproductive and unhelpful.
Bob Collins added that he had full confidence in Garda Commissioner Drew Harris.
Climate talks
Mr Ryan has defended the Governments promise to contribute the €25 million over two years to the new Loss and Damage Fund agreed at COP28 to help poor and vulnerable countries affected by climate disasters.
Irish overseas aid agencies had been critical of the allocation saying that it was too little and represented "robbing Peter to pay Paul".
However, speaking at COP28 in Dubai Minister Ryan said that on a per capita basis Ireland's contribution is the second highest in the world after that of the United Arab Emirates.
Additional reporting: George Lee in Dubai
