Fianna Fáil leader Micheal Martin will not attend the weekly meeting of his party's TDs and senators next week as he will be travelling to the COP summit in Brazil.
A spokesperson for the Taoiseach confirmed the schedule this evening, saying Micheál Martin will not be in the country.
While the COP climate action summit is taking place in Brazil from Monday 10 November until Friday 21 November, the leaders summit takes place in the days leading up to it, on Thursday and Friday next week.
Mr Martin has been meeting with various party backbench TDs in recent days to discuss the fallout from Fianna Fáil's disastrous Presidential Election campaign.
However, the fact he will not attend the parliamentary party meeting next week at a time when there is ongoing dissent within the party ranks and rumours a no confidence motion in his party leadership is likely to be criticised by some dissenters.
On Sunday, a day after Independent candidate Catherine Connolly became the next president-elect of Ireland in a landslide victory, a number of Fianna Fáil backbench TDs confirmed they are considering tabling a no confidence motion in Mr Martin.
However, while members of the rebel faction believe they have close to the 12 parliamentary party signatures needed to be able to table the motion, to date none has been tabled, with a counter view that this will not happen unless a presumptive leadership contender such as Minister for Justice Jim O'Callaghan or another senior figure challenges Mr Martin to the leadership.
While Mr O'Callaghan is widely seen as a future leadership contender, to date he has given no public indication of a willingness to challenge Mr Martin, at this stage.
