Joe Higgins (Dublin West, Socialist Party)

This looks suspiciously like a Fine Gael coup with regard to the management of EU affairs by the Government. Is this the case? Has the Taoiseach elbowed the Tánaiste out to deal with far flung areas such as North Korea and so on while in essence corralling the critical policy and EU matters among himself as a Fine Gael Taoiseach and a Fine Gael Minister for Finance aided and abetted by a Fine Gael Minister of State for European affairs? I will repeat the question which the Taoiseach did not really answer. How are the Department of the Taoiseach and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade to co-ordinate intervention in critical EU matters? Will the Taoiseach explain this in greater detail and more clearly?

How many staff in the Taoiseach's Department and on the public payroll are doing constituency queries or like work? With regard to the secretary generalship of the Taoiseach's Department, what is the salary level of the new chief of the Department? In view of how outraged the public has been by the extent of the obscene payments to the predecessor, how does the Taoiseach justify continuing payment of such vast amounts to the tops of the public service when low and middle-income public sector workers are on the one hand struggling but on the other hand being tarred as if they were in the top echelons by the likes of Independent Newspapers and the rest?

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