Frank Aiken intelligence in New York City and London in return for £500 a month. The pact was originally approved by Aiken, who left soon after, before being succeeded by Andrew Cooney and Moss Twomey who kept up the secret espionage relationship. Aiken was at the April 1925 Commemoration ceremony at Dundalk, but by March 1926—when De Valera founded a new party, Fianna Fáil—he was in America. Aiken was first elected to Dáil Éireann as a Sinn Féin candidate for Louth in 1923; in June 1927 he was re-elected there for Fianna Fáil, continuing to be re-elected for that party at every
Progressive Democrats governments four times, on each occasion with Fianna Fáil (1989–1992; 1997–2002; 2002–2007; 2007–2009), and also with the Green Party from 2007–2009. In 2005 Michael McDowell publicly took a firmly anti-republican position and named Gerry Adams, Martin McGuinness and Martin Ferris as members of the IRA Army Council. The convention in Irish politics at this time was not to accuse Sinn Fein politicians of being members of the Army Council, in doing so McDowell broke with convention. He said that until the IRA disbanded Sinn Fein could not be involved in government, North or South. On 7 September 2006 Mary Harney