Shane Ross (Dublin South, Independent)
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Question 523: To ask the Minister for Justice and Equality the sum of any public funds and their purpose which have been awarded by his Department either directly or indirectly to the Irish Business and Employers' Confederation in the past decade. [22268/11]

Alan Shatter (Dublin South, Fine Gael)
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I wish to inform the Deputy that the information requested is not readily available. Given the period of time concerned and amount of detail sought the information requested could only be compiled by the use of a disproportionate and inordinate amount of staff time and effort.

However, to be of assistance I can inform the Deputy that in the period since I took up office, that is from 9 March 2011 to date, one payment has been made by my Department to the Irish Business and Employers Confederation (IBEC). The Equality Authority made a grant in the amount of €15,000 for the Integrated Workplace Project, which was paid on 20 July, 2011.

I also wish to refer the Deputy to Parliamentary Question No. 389 of 17 May, 2011 and, in particular, the following extract from my reply.

While the National Disability Authority (NDA) was a member of IBEC, membership was terminated with effect from 2010. The following amounts were paid by the NDA to IBEC for the years 2007 - 2009:

January 2007 - €1505.93

January 2008 - €1719.00

January 2009 - €1642.60