"I am the Minister. I am not a rubber stamp, and I refuse to be a rubber stamp."
So the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Andrews, described his attitude to his job in October 1998 at the height of the controversy over his role in diplomatic postings and promotions in his Department.
Mr Andrews's intervention in the Department's normal promotion procedures to secure promotions for two diplomats and to rewrite a reshuffle of ambassadors and senior staff planned by the Department's secretary-general led to a political storm.
However, Mr Andrews insisted he was entitled to do what he did, saying he was an independent man. His ringing declaration of independence was typical of this stubborn man who never underestimated his own ability.
Regarded almost universally as basically decent and honourable, very few people have nasty things to say about him. His open support for George Colley during Fianna Fail's leadership election in 1979 led to many years on the backbenches. A politician with a striking physical presence, charm and no hint of dishonesty, he spent a long time seen as an underachieving, marginal figure.
However in 1992, immediately on Mr Charles Haughey's departure as party leader, he was plucked from the backbenches by Mr Albert Reynolds and given the plum portfolio of foreign affairs. It was one that appeared to suit perfectly his somewhat patrician polished style, as well as his personal commitment to justice issues and the developing world.
A year after his elevation to Cabinet he was obliged to move to the Department of Defence and the Marine - a post he jocosely dismissed as "fish and ships" - to make way for Mr Dick Spring to become minister for foreign affairs. He continued to covet the foreign affairs position, and when Fianna Fail returned to power with the Progressive Democrats in 1997 he was disappointed to be first offered a Cabinet post running the European section of the Department, before having the offer withdrawn. He returned to Defence.
But when Mr Ray Burke resigned from Cabinet over allegations of improper political payments, Mr Andrews returned to Foreign Affairs.
His critics have accused him of laziness, but there is only some truth in that. He works enthusiastically in areas which interest him, and has been an enthusiastic campaigner to win Ireland a seat on the UN Security Council later this year. He has taken a deep personal interest in crises in Rwanda, Algeria and East Timor and visited all of these places.
But while he was deeply personally interested in such aspects of foreign policy, he tended to take more of a back seat in relation to Northern Ireland. In the strand two talks in 1992-'93 involving the Northern parties, Mr Padraig Flynn dominated discussions, while in the lead-up to the Belfast Agreement and since, the Minister of State, Ms Liz O'Donnell, has been given considerable prominence.
In relation to Northern Ireland, his individual streak soon reasserted itself, and he made a number of controversial and unscripted comments that infuriated politicians involved in the Northern Ireland talks. He first commented that there would be no changes in Articles 2 and 3, and then declared that North/South bodies would have "executive powers, not unlike a government".
Mr Ken Maginnis of the Ulster Unionist Party, however, summed up the intelligent view of these incidents. He said Mr Andrews was "prone to careless outbursts that give offence, particularly to those who don't know him very well and don't know that underlying that person is a basically decent man".
He displayed the same tendency when at the EU summit in Luxembourg two years ago he described President Zeroual of Algeria, who was facing considerable international criticism over the violence in his country, as "a fine man" committed to the welfare of his people.
Mr Andrews, a Dail deputy since 1965, is married to Ms Annette Cusack and they have two sons and three daughters.