Noel Ahern (Dublin North West, Fianna Fail)

That will follow. From my five years of experience, in some cases one can have a delegation order and in others one does not. As Deputy Noonan will be aware, much depends on the relationship the Minister has with the Minister of State. Some Ministers of State will say that they had great freedom without delegation orders and some of them might be honest enough to say that, depending on the individual and how confident or otherwise the Minister was, one might not always enjoy the freedom one might like, with or without a delegation order. Much depends on the individual Minister and I am sure Deputy Noonan would know far more about it than I would. That issue will flow down.

I suppose it is good for the Minister of State to have the delegation order in that the structure and the Civil Service take more note of it. In some cases Ministers have the overall responsibility for bringing matters to Cabinet but it generally works better if one has a delegation order, although it is not always essential and, from my limited experience, it is not always the test of whether one has the freedom to properly examine a role or not.

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