asked the Minister for Post and Telegraphs when the 1974 Telephone Directory will be circulated.
Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - Telephone Directory.
24.
It is expected that distribution of the 1974 telephone directory will commence towards the end of March and will be completed within about two weeks.
Might I ask a supplementary question? I have come across some people who have experienced difficulty in reading the size of the type now. Are there any proposals to improve the type set of the existing directory?
That is a separate question which, if the Deputy will put it down, I will answer. The Deputy should have asked a supplementary question on this, or some Deputy opposite should, if they had really been minding their business, instead of putting pointless and senseless questions.
(Interruptions.)
The question which they should have asked——
Is it in order for the Minister to reply to a hypothetical supplementary question? Nobody has asked a supplementary question.
(Interruptions.)
May I ask that we make some positive progress? May I further ask that the temperature be lowered?
Would the Chair ask the Minister to conduct himself?
Question No. 25, Deputy Ruairí Brugha.
In relation to Question No. 24, I want to place on record some important information which I think ought to have been asked for.
(Interruptions.)
I am on my feet to ask a supplementary question.
The Chair did not observe the Deputy; otherwise he would have called him.
On a point of order, the Minister seems to me to be using this to put something on record. Nobody has asked him to put anything on record. I am here to ask a supplementary question.
The Deputy may now proceed to ask it.
(Interruptions.)
I am answering Question No. 24.
The Minister has answered it. The Minister is answering a hypothetical supplementary question.
(Interruptions.)
A Cheann Comhairle, Deputies opposite are preventing me from placing on record——
Why did the Minister not reply to the question?
Deputy Faulkner, the Chair is on his feet. I want to bring in Deputy Haughey on a supplementary question to Question No. 24.
In connection with the preparation of the 1974 Telephone Directory, could the Minister arrange to have a review made of the first part of the directory, namely, the information part, because I find—and I think many other people do—the layout of the information part of the telephone directory very unsatisfactory.
Deputies
Hear, hear.
In connection with the forthcoming directory, would the Minister arrange to have somebody look at it with a view to making it more intelligible to the ordinary person?
If Deputies opposite would take the trouble to put down questions like that, they would, and will, get answers to them, but they ask miscellaneous questions of all descriptions——
(Interruptions.)
——instead of the one question they should have asked: why was the telephone directory two months late this year? An Opposition that was doing its job would have asked that question. There is a very good answer to it which I am prepared to give.
(Interruptions.)
I will now give it by way of public statement outside the House if I am not permitted to give it inside the House by the incontinence of the Opposition. The obvious question any Opposition would ask——
(Interruptions.)
Could I ask you, Sir— in so far as it seems to be necessary in view of what we have seen today—to instruct the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs as to the role of a Minister and a Deputy during Question Time and to inform him that when he has a Government Information Service available to him, he can use it — as he does —for putting out statements? If he wants to come in here to abuse Question Time, he can only expect to hold up the business of the House and provoke disorder which you do not want.
Question Time should not be used for statements of a provocative nature.
(Interruptions.)
The Chair is now proceeding to Question No. 25.
I know that if Deputies opposite create disorder at Question Time——
(Interruptions.)
A Cheann Comhairle, did you call Question No. 25?
(Interruptions.)
Yes, I have called Question No. 25.