asked the Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries if he will enumerate the recommendations which were not implemented of the Store Cattle Study Group Report, commissioned in 1966; and the reasons in each case.
17.
Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - Meat Study Reports.
16.
asked the Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries if he will enumerate the recommendations which were not implemented of the survey on the beef, mutton and lamb industry commissioned in 1962; and the reasons in each case.
With your permission, a Cheann Comhairle, I propose to take Questions Nos. 16 and 17 together.
The Deputy will find in each of these documents a chapter entitled "Summary of Recommendations" which enumerates these in full.
I can assure the Deputy that all the recommendations were carefully considered and those of them implemented which could be accepted as warranted and practicable in the circumstances that obtained. I could not hope to deal adequately in the compass of a reply at Question Time with the reasons for non-implementation of recommendations where such was the case.
Why could the Minister not give the information in regard to these specific recommendations? Surely the information is available in his Department?
The Deputy will be aware that the recommendations were extremely exhaustive and, as I have said in my reply, it would be quite impracticable to deal with them by way of a reply to a Parliamentary Question.
Would it not be possible, as has been done on so many other occasions, for the Minister to issue a tabular statement setting out the recommendations and the action he has taken?
No, I do not think it would.
Why not?
Because, if the Deputy wanted a reply of the kind that I think he wants, he would need to put down a series of separate questions to enable me to give a specific reply to each facet of the general question that he has put down.
I will gladly do that.
Could I ask the Minister what was the composition of this store cattle study group? Did it contain officers of his Department?
That is a separate question. I have not got the information readily to hand.
I thought the Minister might know. I am rather puzzled by the suggestion that a study group of this kind made recommendations that are apparently impracticable. It seems rather improbable, in view of the kind of composition of study groups of this kind as they are normally appointed.
If the Deputy wants to find out the make of that study group he should put down a question and I will get it for him.
I can check it in the Library.
I would remind the Deputy that one of them was set up in 1966 and the other in 1962. So, to recall the exact make-up of those two groups at this remove in time would be difficult.
I accept that. I do not blame the Minister for not recalling it when I myself do not recall it. I thought it might be in the Minister's pink file, nonetheless.