Between 1982 and 1987, he served as a Minister of State under Taoiseach Garret FitzGerald. He was first appointed a Minister of State for Youth Affairs at the Department of Labour in December 1982, with additional duties at the Department of Education from December 1983. In 1983 in the Dáil, he defended the wording of the then proposed Eighth Amendment of the Constitution of Ireland on behalf of the government, specifically to ensure that the Supreme Court of Ireland could not discover an unenumerated right to abortion.