Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

It is not rubbish. I recall Deputy Howlin and the then Tánaiste, Mr. Dick Spring, won a substantial number of seats. They no longer wanted to play second fiddle to the Fine Gael party and did not go into coalition with them. They entered into coalition with Fianna Fáil and developed this idea. We are political parties, and I do not mean political in the sense that one is just making appointments; we are parties that want to get policies implemented. There must be proper respectful demarcation lines between full-time permanent civil servants and full-time political programmes and political input. That was the idea at the time and it worked. Sinn Féin are no strangers to special advisers in Northern Ireland. We saw that in the RHI report.

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