Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Usually, somebody goes into a Government Department after spending a long time as the relevant spokesperson or as spokesperson in another area, but for personal reasons I hadn't been in the front line of politics for a number of years. So I came back in as spokesman on finance in the summer of 2010. So I wouldn't have ... if, you know ... the point I'm trying to get across is: if I had been spokesman on finance during kind of normal years before the crisis occurred, I'm sure I'd have got to know a lot of the finance officials because that would be normal relationship, you know, as people like Deputy McGrath would know some of the senior officials over now, and Deputy Doherty, but I actually knew very few of them. I hardly knew them at all. So I found they were grand.