I think it is about time a voice was raised in this House to complain about the delay in the publication of some of the annual reports of Government Departments and various other recurring documents for which the Stationery Office are responsible. The fact is that if these reports were issued by ordinary private companies they would have to be available within a matter of weeks in relation to the termination of a particular year. This is not the fault of the members of the House. It is utterly deplorable that these delays should take place. It may be due to some extent to the fact that the Stationery Office is not getting reports in time from the Departments. If that is so, it is about time that the Departments speeded up their end of the work.
We know that long delays arise quite frequently subsequent to the sending of draft reports and that kind of thing to the Stationery Office and by them, to the printers. Something will have to be done, if Parliamentary democracy is to mean anything and if our discussions are to mean anything, to speed up the publication of these annual reports.
Another serious delay which is causing grave inconvenience to members of the House and to the public in general is the delay which elapses between the passing of Bills into Acts and the publication of these Acts. It is not good enough for some so-called estimater in the Stationery Office to estimate the public demand which is likely to arise in relation to a particular Act. Acts should be available within a matter of weeks of their being passed by this House. They should be available in both texts. Again, something might have to be done there in relation to the Translation Office. The Stationery Office will have to do something about speeding up their machinery.
Another matter which is causing serious inconvenience to the public and to professional and cultural interests in this city and country is the inadequacy of the stocks held by the Government Publications Office at the Arcade near the G.P.O. It may sometimes take a person a week or a fortnight to get some document which is supposed to be available. We still maintain the theory that ignorance of the law is inexcusable. Yet any person who attends at the Government Publications Office for the purpose of ascertaining the law by purchasing a copy of it cannot get it in many cases.
The Government Publications Office is supposed to have a stock of maps. It is not an infrequent occurence for people going to the Government Publications Office to procure an ordnance survey map to be told that it will take four days to get a copy from the Phoenix Park. The President's car coming down empty, as it does on some occasions, could bring down enough maps to stock the office for a year. Members of the public and tourists have been told in the Government Publications Office that it would take four days to produce the map; that they would have to go to the far end of the Phoenix Park to get a map.
When complaints are made, there is the usual shrug of the Civil Service shoulder and the reply "That is the best we can do." That is not good enough. The Government Publications Sales Office is quite a joke for people going to it. It may be that the other booksellers are not disturbed by this, because many of them can get a book quicker than the Government Publications Sales Office. But if we want to maintain a Sales Office at public expense in the centre of the city, it is about time some reasonably efficient service were provided.
I would be happy about voting more money under this head if it meant we would have a speeding-up of the printing of Acts of the Oireachtas and of the recurring reports from Government Departments and semi-Government bodies, for which the Stationery Office is responsible, and if it meant that the Government Publications Sales Office would carry an adequate stock of goods or, if they had not got the required goods in stock, that they would, at least, make them available to members of the general public within 24 hours and not take four days to get from O'Connell Street to the Phoenix Park and back again.
