Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

I agree that the parliamentary questions procedure is a good one for Members, but it should be used appropriately. In many cases, Members table parliamentary questions because if they use the normal correspondence route they feel they do not get the information quickly enough. That causes a lot of work in the PQ system. I do not mind that, however, because at least those concerned are public representatives and have a democratic mandate to ask what they like, which is fine. A process began whereby questions could be submitted on Tuesday morning and responded to by Thursday evening, thus resulting in fewer people in Members' clinics the following Saturday.

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