Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)

I, too, support the amendment. The only point I wanted to make, because we have argued this repeatedly here on several occasions, is that perhaps the Minister of State, Deputy Barry Andrews, might note for the future that over this past difficult period of work to rule and non-co-operation with elected voices some Ministers behaved with a degree of sane and sensible response by stating the Department noted the parliamentary question and will revert to the Deputy as soon as it is in a position to do so. Only last week there was an example of proactivity on the part of the Minister for Social Protection, Deputy Ó Cuív, who wrote to Deputies in advance of the resolution of these difficulties highlighting his intention to address correspondence and parliamentary questions that had yet to be resolved and to start the process in preparation for the responses to issue.

However, with the Department of Health and Children time after time the responses were that if the Deputy is still interested, he or she may resubmit whenever this difficulty is resolved, putting the onus back on the Deputies once again to resubmit, which I have been doing since the indication of the ending of the work to rule. That is indicative of a contemptuous disposition on the part of the Minister and those responsible in terms of responding to Members of this House and contrasts badly with the practice in other Departments.

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