I withdraw that charge and say that the Minister for Education deliberately refused to tell me the truth and misled me and the House.
If I may get back to the law charges, under the heading Travelling and Incidental Expenses the April/December, 1974 figure was a total of £2,760 and the Estimate for 1975 was in line with this figure; it was £4,500. We now find an additional sum requested under this heading of £15,000. The £15,000 is made up of £6,900 in relation to the Attorney General and his staff, £3,200 in relation to the Chief State Solicitor's Office and £4,900 in relation to the Director of Public Prosecutions and his staff. In regard to the latter figure of £4,900 for the Director of Public Prosecutions and his staff, I would like to know more about the incurring of travelling or incidental expenses by the Director and his staff. I think a more detailed explanation is required before it would be acceptable.
In regard to the additional £2,400 for the Attorney General and his staff, it seems scarcely credible that an under-estimation of this kind could have taken place if any consideration had been given to what the Attorney General and his staff might have to do in the course of the year. It appears that there was a high degree of carelessness in this regard. So far as our information goes, neither the Attorney General nor his staff did anything that would incur travelling or incidental expenses to any great extent out of line with the 1974 figure. Further explanation is required here. In respect of the Chief State Solicitor's Office the additional sum required for travelling and incidental expenses is £3,200. If the travelling and incidental expenses of the Attorney General's office and the Chief State Solicitor's office are inter-connected, then it should be shown why the expenses were not properly anticipated because together they come to an additional figure of £10,000.
Under the general law expenses the additional sum required is £75,000. The figure for April/December, 1974 was £26,650 and the Estimate for 1975 was £43,000 which would be more or less in line with the previous figure. It is difficult to see what could have caused an increase of £75,000. The ingredients of this heading are expenses for juries, fees to pathologist, payments to witnesses in civil actions and miscellaneous expenses. We are told by the Attorney General that we have a pathologist appointed at £10,000 a year and one court case, as he said, had costs running to somewhere in the region of £14,000. In general, in regard to the two items I have mentioned, that have been dealt with, it may be relevant to inquire whether in the setting up of two offices, that is to say, the expansion of the Attorney General's office and the setting up of a new and heavily-staffed office for the Director of Public Prosecutions, whether we are already operating Parkinson's Law to this extraordinary extent and whether the fact that these two offices are now in existence is to some extent due to what has occured in this regard.
The other additional figure is a sum of £30,000 in relation to the Law Reform Commission. It is understandable that the commission should have been set up and that the remuneration to date of members might be covered by the figure of £5,000 or remuneration for the remainder of the financial year might be covered by that figure but the other expenses of £25,000 should, I believe, be explained in great detail. There is a sum of £25,000 provided towards the rent and setting up expenses of office accommodation for the commission. It is quite an expensive office for a small number of people. If expenses of this kind have been incurred at this juncture, it would appear that the office is already in operation. Are they ready to go into operation? It is a great expense to the taxpayers of this country.
If this is a reasonable deduction from the seeking of a sum of money of this magnitude in relation to the Law Reform Commission, it is relevant to ask what tasks have been undertaken up to the present. How many meetings have they had? What topics have they placed on the priority list for law reform consideration? When may we know what their priorities are? When may we expect their first reports? Will their first reports relate to reforms which are vitally necessary on the civil side or to reforms which are equally vitally necessary on the criminal side in relation to the very real, day-to-day problems affecting the business of the courts?
Much more information should be given. The Attorney General and everybody involved in the preparation of the Book of Estimates—and it is the job of the Government, lorded over by the Minister for Finance— must be charged with gross neglect in the way they come here almost daily, sometimes hourly, queueing up with Supplementary Estimates for colossal sums of money. Inflation is one thing and the Government should know as much as, if not more than, anybody else about inflation because of their responsibility for it and encouragement of it in many instances. The figures we are asked to accept now go beyond any figure that should be allowed for inflation. The Government must be taken to task for this. For that reason, I am not accepting the Supplementary Estimate of the Attorney General and I am asking that the matter be voted on.