THE Fine Gael TD, Mr Paddy Harte, has confirmed that five people in Leinster House asked him to provide them with a poppy in remembrance of the war dead.
However, Mr Harte and the Minister of State at the Department of the Environment, Mr Emmet Stagg, were the only TDs' to wear the emblem in their lapels in the Dail yesterday.
Mr Harte denied he "invited" colleagues to join him in wearing the poppy earlier this week while on a "journey of reconciliation" to war graves in France to commemorate the dead.
"I did not invite anyone to wear a poppy. I said I would be wearing a poppy and if anyone asked for one, I would provide it. I can't see the point of all this nonsense about Paddy Harte wearing a poppy," Mr Harte said.
While in France, he had visited a war cemetery with 36,000 graves - representing "a calamity of a magnitude that boggles the imagination". However, all journalists could think about was whether Paddy Harte had a poppy in his lapel, he added.
The peppy was, simply "a wild flower that soldiers of the first World War plucked from the ground to decorate their uniforms". It was not a "party political emblem".
Mr Harte led the trip to France, in which Northern loyalist figures, including Mr Andy Tyrie, Mr David Ervine and Mr Glen Barr, the former Taoiseach, Dr Garret FitzGerald, and a number of clergy participated.