Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour)

If the Taoiseach is less reliant on Independent Members of the House, as he said, why should he discriminate in favour of the small number of Independent Deputies who receive the service and against the rest of the Members of the House? Not many Deputies have an assistant principal officer available to them at a fairly serious level. When the Taoiseach says the service is only available now, as required, one must ask by whom it is required and for what purpose. Now that Deputy Blaney has been drawn on to a sucker punch and has rejoined the old family, will the service still be available to him or will he now be ignored like the rest of the Fianna Fáil backbenchers?

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