Mr. Jim Breslin:

I can answer the question on parliamentary questions and I can also give the committee the detailed information on it. I thank the Deputy for the opportunity to recognise that the HSE contributes significantly to answering all of those questions. The number of oral questions, and they are all done within the Department, is 597 in 2017. The number of written questions answered by the Department is 3,205. A further 152 are answered by the Minister having been referred to the HSE. Some 7,900 are assigned within the Department, looked at, signed out to the HSE, there is liaison with the HSE and then the answer comes from the HSE. In a very significant number of them the final piece is done by the HSE. The HSE can comment on the daily work involved in responding to those. I also have a page which shows the responsiveness of the HSE to those referrals, that is, how many of the questions the HSE gets that are answered within ten working days. I have those statistics.