'dual mandate' whereby a person can serve as a county councillor and hold another elected office at the same time. This proposal, however, led to severe opposition from the Independent TDs who supported the government at the time and had to be deferred. The legislation eventually became law in 2003. During his tenure as Minister, Dempsey continued to serve as the Fianna Fáil director of elections. His first major success was the election of Mary McAleese to the position of President of Ireland in 1997. Two years later in 1999 he presided over the most successful local election campaign for the party ever. Minister for Education and Science: 2002–2004 Following the re-election of the government in 2002, Dempsey became Minister for Education and Science. He took over as Minister at a time when one of the teachers unions was extremely dissatisfied with a number of pay issues. These issues were eventually resolved in 2002 shortly after taking office. As Minister for Education, Dempsey was forced into an embarrassing climb down in 2004 on his proposal to re-introduce third-level fees. The move was opposed by the Union of Students in Ireland and by the Progressive Democrats. Minister for Communications, Marine and Natural Resources: 2004–2007 In a cabinet reshuffle in September 2004, Dempsey was appointed as Minister for Communications, Marine and Natural Resources. During his tenure he oversaw the controversial Corrib gas project. After agreeing to have an independent assessment of the raw gas pipeline planned for Kilcommon, Erris, Dempsey employed a firm to carry it out. Only after the report was concluded did it emerge that the firm was half owned by Royal Dutch Shell, a fact which they neglected to relate to the Minister. An embarrassed Dempsey was forced to hastily commission another report. Coming to the end of his tenure at the Department of Communications, Marine and Natural Resources and before the 2007 general election, his department pursued the resurrection of Digital Terrestrial Television following its failure to be established under the Broadcasting Act 2001 due to unfavourable economic conditions for venture capital around the DTT market in many countries in 2001. First his department invited tenders to build and programme a DTT trial in Dublin and County Louth. The failure seemed to lie around a commercial network builder model and the difficulties in creating revenue generation return for such investment and the solution seems to be the involvement