I am informed that the total staff to be transferred from the Department of Industry and Commerce to the proposed Department of Transport and Power will be about 400, but a very substantial part of that number would be represented by the employees at Shannon Airport. The staff will be housed where they are located at present, in the Department of Industry and Commerce building in Kildare Street, where the new Minister will also have his office. There will be no change in that regard.
The justification for the arrangement, in my view, is precisely what was said by Deputy Dillon, that this will give the public better service at no greater cost. So long as the activities appropriate to these divisions of the Department of Industry and Commerce now are not extended, there will, of course, be no increase in staff. I am not, however, going to put the new Department into a strait-jacket and say that they must never expand. Indeed, as I mentioned yesterday, we contemplate the possibility of certain developments affecting some of these matters which could in course of time impose new responsibilities on the Department. Whether that will involve any increase of staff or not cannot be decided now and, of course, any proposal of that kind must come to the Dáil and be justified here.
Most of the matters raised by Deputy Sweetman were, I think, raised also last evening by Deputy Costello and I referred to them. It is certainly not intended that the new Minister or any Minister should interfere with these statutory bodies in their day to day administration. They were set up deliberately by this House with that independent position in regard to their management affairs which they now have because we believed that that would make for more efficient working.
Deputy Costello last evening denounced the Departmental file. Do we want to stuff up these statutory boards with Departmental files, the type of records that they would have to keep if Deputies were entitled to ask questions on details of administration—why some official was promoted or some official was dismissed or why a supply of power or transport or something else was given or not given in certain circumstances? If Deputies were entitled to ask for details about their administration of that kind, then, of course, the Departmental files which are now, according to Deputy Costello, the bane of Government Departments, would have to reappear in equal number in the offices of these State boards.
It is not true that Deputies are refused answers to questions about these bodies. Indeed, the practice has been that, when questions relate to policy, the answers are given in the fullest possible terms. It certainly has been, so far as I know, always my practice and, indeed, the practice of everybody who has held the office of Minister for Industry and Commerce, to give full answers to questions dealing with policy matters but to refuse to give information in matters where the Minister has no responsibility, matters which are by law transferred to the independent decision of these statutory boards.