Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

To answer some of the questions, it is my intention to chair the Cabinet committees myself but clearly on occasion the Tánaiste may chair some of them in my absence.

Cabinet subcommittees are useful in general. They allow the Taoiseach and other Ministers to be across what is happening in a lot of different Departments and they can be useful in troubleshooting issues before they get to Cabinet so that they can then be agreed by Cabinet once they have been agreed and teased out at Cabinet subcommittee level.

Overall, there are too many. There are ten at present. That is too many, and too many people attend them. There can be 30 to 40 attending Cabinet subcommittee meetings.

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