Joan Collins (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance)
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503. To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine the costs to his Department to process and respond to a priority, an oral and a written Parliamentary Question. [16584/14]

Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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The cost of answering a Parliamentary Question and indeed the time taken to answer all questions will vary considerably according to the nature of the question asked. No staff in my Department are assigned full time to dealing with Parliamentary Questions. Parliamentary Questions are dealt with, as the need arises, by the staff in the sections dealing with the particular issue raised in individual Parliamentary Questions. The number and level of staff and the time spent on an individual answer depends on the complexity and importance of the issue raised the form in which the information exists in the Department and whether an oral or written is required. As the processing of individual Parliamentary Questions is undertaken as part of the normal day to day work of individual sections within Departments it would be unnecessarily burdensome to isolate the administrative costs of processing Parliamentary Questions from the overall administrative costs of each Department.