Micheál Martin: “It will be very challenging because there are a lot of competing demands.”

We will be growing expenditure this year. There's no cuts here.

I believe that parliamentary democracy matters. People may criticise it and so on, but it's not a routine sort of service. It is the expression of the democratic will of the people in parliament. I think that matters, and that should be…

I was involved in these issues in the previous government and agreement was hammered out at that stage - an agreement was arrived at, and we want to do well by honouring that agreement on all sides.

If that's not a platform for negotiations, I don't know what is.