Willie O'Dea (Limerick East, Fianna Fail)

I assure Deputy Gormley and the House that there was no hidden agenda. As Fianna Fáil, not Sinn Féin, is the republican party, we had no need to reclaim nationalism from Sinn Féin and there was no such intention. While many commentators related the commemoration to recent opinion poll gains, I do not take much account of opinion polls. The poll that matters to me is the result on the day.

I do not know the exact cost but it was approximately €325,000. Although I will not say it was cheap, it was quite reasonable at that price. We learned that, as I have always suspected, people love pageantry, the Army is a popular institution and people like to see demonstrated publicly that we have a modern, well equipped and well trained Army. People appreciate the efforts of the Army in peacekeeping around the world and they appreciated that this was put on open display in Dublin. The feedback has been generally positive and I welcome the positive comments by Deputies Gormley and Timmins.

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