Mr. Damien Moloney:

I will take that question. The structures have changed in response to where we are. The structures do not necessarily anticipate political decisions made by the electorate or elsewhere but the structures have changed. In a manner of speaking, we have become more responsive to the needs of Government in terms of drafting Committee Stage amendments to a greater number of Private Members' Bills. We obviously do not do so for all 300 because the system would have ground to a halt had we been doing so, but we do it for the amendments to Bills the Government shows an active interest in, which is a smaller subset. The structures have changed in the sense that the public law expertise used to just vest in the Office of the Attorney General. To the extent that the Attorney General offers any assistance or support to the Oireachtas, it was that every Government Bill that arrived on the floor of the Houses of the Oireachtas, was accompanied by a warranty from the Attorney General of the day that the Bill was constitutional and legally sound. Clearly, if there are many Private Members' Bills, an equivalent is needed to make that operable on the side of the Oireachtas, and while the Attorney General supports the Oireachtas in that respect, he is the adviser to the Government. The structural changes have been around the Office of the Parliamentary Legal Adviser, the elevation in the rank of the legal adviser, the increasing of the numbers of staff in the Office of the Parliamentary Legal Adviser and the creating of the public law expertise. I have a very good working relationship with the parliamentary legal adviser and that is important. It is important to both branches of Government to make sure that in a co-operative sense, the public law expertise the State has is shared in an equitable way, so that the State does not find itself funding two separate services that do not co-operate where it is possible for them to co-operate.

I could answer further but I do not want to take up all of the Deputy's time.