Mr. Martin Fraser:

I do not meet with the Government advisers. They are political appointees. They have a meeting every week at which they do political stuff. Obviously, I am involved in Government business and I attend the leaders' meeting, as it would be called colloquially, which is actually a Cabinet committee on Government co-ordination. That happens most weeks and I attend for most of that, although not all of it. I do not get involved in party political stuff or the like, so I am not as involved in some aspects as one might think. Each Government is different, of course, for all sorts of reasons.

In terms of a role on deferral, if I thought a thing was not ready, I would certainly advise the Taoiseach. I would not allow something to be done if procedure was not followed. There is an urgency procedure, of course, and ultimately it is the Taoiseach, not me, who decides what comes to the Cabinet.

As regards this particular situation, the procedure was followed. A memorandum was circulated before the Cabinet meeting which indicated that there would be ambassadorial appointments and a special envoy on the agenda for the following Tuesday. The Minister was to bring the names to the meeting, and he brought those names to the meeting. There was no procedural problem there. The problem, as everybody knows, is that the Taoiseach was not aware of this. That is not a problem with the procedure. It was just a mistake, and that mistake has been acknowledged and apologised for.