Michael McNamara has been elected chairman of the new Oireachtas coronavirus committee.
The maverick independent from Co Clare beat Sinn Féin’s David Cullinance in the contest.
Mr McNamara is a former Labour TD who left the party after losing his seat in 2016, but returned to the Dáil as an independent in the last general election earlier this year.
The committee will sit every Tuesday and will have a limited lifetime, expected to be a year.
The Government is acknowledged as having done a good job managing the country through the coronavirus emergency.
But it has done so largely behind closed doors and calls for greater transparency and accountability have increased in recent weeks.
The new committee will call witnesses before it every week to grill them on their roles in dealing with coronavirus.
Among the first witnesses are expected to be Taoiseach Leo Varadkar and Minister for Health, Simon Harris.
Both have said they have no problem appearing before the 19-person committee.
The committee is made up of four members each from Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and Sinn Féin, with one member each from all the other groups and parties making up the 19.
The committee is sitting in the Dáil chamber for each of its sessions so it can observe strict social distancing recommendations.
