Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)

The arrangements have evolved over the year but there is undoubtedly room for improvement. Increasingly in this House, we are passing legislation to devolve power to other bodies, for example, local authorities and health boards, which are not accountable to this House. Neither is the Minister accountable for those bodies, but we need to find a mechanism by which Members can ask questions of those bodies and obtain written answers.

Furthermore, a simple, practical arrangement would involve changing the rota pertaining to questions such that if a Minister is not available, it could be changed at much shorter notice, by agreement. As one who is responsible for the Central Statistics Office, I am firmly of the view that it is not my role to talk about how many hind quarters were exported to Libya and that all questions on statistics should be tabled for written answer.

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