of the 19 independent and United Left Alliance TDs agreed to form a technical group. Catherine Murphy was the group's whip, while Maureen O'Sullivan was assistant whip. Finian McGrath resigned as chairman in October 2012 when Mick Wallace rejoined the loose group, against the wishes of many of its members. The independent TDs who chose not to join this technical group were: Michael Healy-Rae, Michael Lowry and Noel Grealish. 32nd Dáil: Standing orders were revised to allow multiple technical groups to coexist. One group was formed between the three members of the Social Democrats and the two members of the Green Party. Another technical group was formed around the four members of Independents 4 Change, together with the non-party TDs Catherine Connolly, Thomas Pringle and Maureen O'Sullivan. A third group called the Rural Independents Group was also formed, comprising 7 members. European Parliament Political groups of the European Parliament are required by that parliament's standing orders to have a coherent "complexion" of political principles. Despite this rule, a "Technical Group of Independents" comprising members from dissimilar political ideologies has been formed on two occasions: from 1979 until 1984 and between 1999 and 2001. Such was the mixed nature of the latter group that it drew the disapproval of the Committee on Constitutional Affairs, which attempted to disband the group within months of its creation; after legal appeals, the disbandment was finally confirmed by a ruling of the European Court of Justice, making it unlikely that technical groups will reappear within the European Parliament in the future. France In France, during the nineteenth-century and first half of the twentieth century, most French national politicians were independents, that is elected without formally belonging to a campaign party. The first modern French political parties date from the early 1900s (foundation of Action libérale and the Parti radical). The first legislation on political parties dates from 1911, though it was not until 1928 that parliamentarians were required to select a political party for the parliamentary register (either by formally joining a group, or by loosely working with one as an apparenté, or associate), and not until after 1945 that structured political parties came to dominate parliamentary work. However, long before this the development of parliamentary committees during the First World War created an incentive to belong to a parliamentary party. As there were fourteen main parliamentary committees, and spaces for them were distributed to