[1] At the time the senior Fianna Fáil TD was Neil Blaney who became a government minister in 1957.
After the events of the Arms Crisis Blaney was sacked as Minister for Agriculture by the Taoiseach Jack Lynch.
In the resulting reshuffle, Cunningham was appointed Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Local Government on 9 May 1970.
[2] This was something of a surprise at the time and was attributed to an attempt by the party leadership to pressurise Blaney within the Donegal North-East constituency.
Cunningham remained a Parliamentary Secretary until Fianna Fáil lost office after the 1973 general election.