Sandra McLellan (Cork East, Sinn Fein)
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Question 428: To ask the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport the number of written and oral questions submitted to him in the period 9 March 2011 to 9 June 2011; the number of these questions referred to another agency or Department for answer; and if he will provide a breakdown of the number of these answers in tabular form. [16504/11]

Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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The number of written and oral questions submitted to me and the number of these referred to another agency or Department for reply for the period 9 March 2011 to 9 June 2011 are detailed in the following table.

Where questions are referred to an Agency, they are requested to reply directly to the Deputy within ten working days and the Deputy is asked to notify my Office if they do not receive a response within that time-frame. It should be noted that this represents a considerable departure from previous practice. The practice of my predecessors with regard to the state agencies was to seek the disallowance of questions relating to areas for which government agencies have been delegated authority by primary legislation. This was incredibly frustrating for deputies who were seeking to hold the Government to account.

The Programme for Government explicitly recognises this and contains the following commitment:

"We propose a radical extension of the parliamentary question system, so that it shall be a statutory duty on any body established by or under statute, or with a majority ownership or funding by the State, to submit to the same parliamentary questions regime as applies to Government departments. This will involve a liability to provide answers to written questions within a specified number of Dáil sitting days. (We will however recognise the special position of bodies with a commercial mandate operating at arm's length from Government.)" I understand that this proposal is currently being advanced. However, rather than wait for these change to be implemented I sought to be proactive on this matter. Given the framework of legislation that underpins the relationship between departmental agencies, the Department and myself as Minister, it would not be appropriate or possible for questions directed to an agency to be answered by myself as Minister. Rather, I brought in a system whereby any questions directed to such an agency would be responded to noting that the question was a matter for a government agency, stating that they government agency was being forwarded the question and that if no answer was received within ten working days, to inform my office of such. I understand that questions being directed to agencies are being responded to within that timeframe in the vast majority of instances.

If the Deputy has any suggestions to make with regard to how this interim process is working, I would be grateful if she could make them known to myself or my office. I am keen to facilitate Deputies to the greatest extent possible in seeking to hold the Government and its agencies to account.