Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I totally agree with the principle and we should do it. I do not know where we are with the planning guidelines for Gaeltacht areas. I will come back to the Deputy by correspondence on that.

Deputy Martin Browne mentioned thatched cottages. I am a big fan of thatched cottages. We used to have a thatched shop in Clonsilla in my constituency, which unfortunately is gone. I spent one of the most pleasant evenings I have had in recent weeks in a thatched pub in County Tipperary with which I am sure the Deputy is familiar. It belongs to one of our councillors. It was a great spot.

On the delay in Departments coming back to Deputy Browne's committee, I am not sure of the procedure if there is a delay. Perhaps we should put a procedure in place. Let us say if a Department does not come back within three months, it gets escalated to the Ceann Comhairle, who then writes to the Minister. We need to come up with a mechanism if there is not one. A reasoned response within three months would be reasonable but we need a mechanism to make sure it gets escalated if that does not happen, perhaps by informing the Ceann Comhairle, who would then inform the Minister who would knock on the Secretary General’s door and ask why it has not been replied to yet.

I congratulate Senator Flynn on her election as Chairperson. On the 84 recommendations, we have a Cabinet committee on social policy that meets every couple of weeks. We have not looked at that report in quite some time so I will make sure it is on the agenda for the next meeting. That requires every Department to give an update on each of the 84 recommendations. Sometimes that spurs things on because things that were sitting on somebody’s desk suddenly get dealt with so they are marked with green or amber rather than red. We will do that at the next one or the one after.