Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

The Taoiseach said one intriguing thing there. Does the Minister, Deputy Ross, as the lead Minister with the Independent Alliance get notification and copies of all Cabinet memos and all memos to Government in advance, as would be the norm with a minority party in government that had a Tánaiste for instance? Can the Taoiseach confirm if he gets advance copies of all the memos, not just the normal notification that Ministers in the Government get?

Second, is the Taoiseach thinking of appointing a new deputy Government Whip and can he elaborate on the deal which was done with Deputy Canney? There are a large number of Ministers of State now. The Taoiseach expanded the number of Ministers of State hugely, almost to Bertie Ahern proportions at the last count. A large number of them now have special advisers, due in part to those who are also attending Government. It is the highest ever in the history of the State. We have four now who do not have advisers, so why do some Ministers of State get advisers and others do not? For instance, the Ministers of State, Deputies Jim Daly, D'Arcy, McEntee, Moran and Halligan, all have advisers, so that would be a cost of roughly half a million euro a year to taxpayers. That is on top of the four Ministers of State who attend Cabinet and their advisers would similarly cost probably another half a million euro.

Does the Department of the Taoiseach provide supports to Deputies Harty and Lowry? Deputy Lowry in particular always seems to be very well informed of what is happening in terms of Cabinet and Cabinet decisions.

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