: On a point of clarification, taking the first item in No. 11——
Vote 3: Department of the Taoiseach .
: Sorry, Deputy, through the Chair——
: I have not moved it yet.
: I am inquiring about a matter of procedure. Will the Taoiseach be making a formal statement and each Deputy making a formal reply?
: That is the procedure but we must finish at 7 o'clock. The Estimates finish at 7 o'clock. Any of them not reached by 7 o'clock must be put from the Chair at 7 o'clock. The first Estimate, the Department of the Taoiseach, Vote No. 3.
: I move:
That a sum not exceeding £386,000 be granted to defray the charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of December, 1978 for the salaries and expenses of the Department of the Taoiseach.
: I know the House has to get through a lot of Estimates. I do not want to hold up the House unduly but there are a couple of matters I want to put in the Taoiseach's presence which arise fairly under his Estimate and which I will not have another opportunity of putting to him. One of them concerns the functioning of the Government Information Services. The other concerns a matter which falls at least partly within the sphere of operations of the Attorney General. I want to protest—I agree it is not a very serious matter and I am not trying to inflate it into something more important than it is—against the practice I have observed here over the year whereby questions addressed to office-holders are if possible, shovelled onto their colleagues. I am afraid I have to say that the Taoiseach himself has been as much an offender in this regard as anybody else or else it was his advisers.
I put to the Taoiseach about six weeks ago a question of relatively trivial importance—I could not put it any higher than that—concerning the propriety of the Government Information Services issuing on formal paper— in other words as an official communication—a speech made by the Minister for the Environment at some sort of function in his own county which was of a plainly party political content.
Under the last Government a clear definition was maintained—or, at any rate, an attempt was made to maintain it, and I do not recall it ever being breached—whereby office holders who wished to put out political statements got the facilities of the Government Information Services but on plain paper and marked "As requested". In other words, the thing ostensibly, as far as the naked eye could see, had been issued by the responsible Ministers themselves. Statements with a party political content were not issued by the Government Information Services officially.
For the third time, this was quite a trivial matter but the office holder responsible was the Taoiseach himself because the Government Information Services comes under his aegis and that question was shoved on to the Minister for the Environment who has no responsibility for the Government Information Services. It was he, or one of his script writers, who wrote the speech but the responsibility, which I was seeking to explore, rested with the Taoiseach for the issuing of this highly contentious party political statement under an official guise. I do not want to inflate this out of proportion. It is a trivial matter but I have to assert that issue of principle in regard to the functioning of the office.
The second thing I want to say is that the office is being used far too much by this Government—I must confess I did not naturally track the behaviour of the last Government with the same jealous eye as I do this one— for the purpose of putting out what are naked constituency statements of purely constituency interest to the office holder concerned. I could produce many examples but this is not the time to do it. One will suffice, and I regret having to mention this Minister twice without giving him any notice or without his being here—I have nothing in the world against the Minister for Defence; it is an accident that this is the first script I pulled out of my files—but this is a speech he made which was issued by the Government Information Services, with blue and green print and an embossed harp, at the opening of a show house for the O'Malley Construction Company Limited at Castlelawn House, Headford Road, Galway on 17 April at 5 p.m.
No. 1, this has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with his function as Minister for Defence. No. 2, the location of it tells me, and tells anybody, that this piece of advertisement for this company, this piece of back slapping, is simply a piece of constituency log rolling and I say it is wrong to use the Government Information Services for the purpose of putting out a statement like this. There is, I admit, nothing objectionable in it. I could not judge the housing situation in Galway. I have no fault to find with the content but the Minister is Minister for Defence and he has no business using his official position, which gives him access to the Government Information Services, to issue what are essentially constituency boosts for himself via this service.
I will leave that topic. I hope the Taoiseach has got the point. In a more specific way, I want to say I was disappointed at the response given the other day by the Minister for Foreign Affairs to a question I tabled, but which I was not here to pursue because I was abroad, in regard to the progress of a matter which is equally under the aegis of the Attorney General as it is under the aegis of the Minister for Foreign Affairs. I wanted to know—it was not the first time I inquired—what was the reason for the delay in the arbitration of our dispute with the British in regard to the Continental Shelf. The reply the Minister for Foreign Affairs gave—a very short reply—was in essence that the nature of the arbitral tribunal to adjudicate the issue was an important one requiring careful consideration of a host of varying factors. Now that answer would be unexceptional were it not for the fact that in May of last year, to my own knowledge, the tribunal which was going to arbitrate this matter was agreed between the two sides. I frankly cannot recall whether or not it was at that moment still a matter of confidentiality but, in case it was, I will not say what it was, but I recall the tribunal was agreed during my brief term of office as Attorney General, if not before that because I was concerned with it also as Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Foreign Affairs.
I am very unhappy at the delay of over a year which has taken place. from my own personal experience. I am inclined to believe—I am guessing because I have no evidence other than past experience—that it may very well be the British who are to blame because I recall that they dragged their feet for a very long time in regard to the issue of arbitration, in the first instance, and we had to take some fairly drastic steps on paper at least to push them into agreeing finally. I think it is a bad thing that there should be this delay of a year because the present juncture—this is only my view; the Taoiseach may be otherwise advised—is peculiarly favourable for pressing ahead with this claim. The position is far, far stronger because the decision in a recent arbitration between the British and another state established—I will not say principles—but certainly the decision was reached on the application of principles which would be peculiarly favourable to us were we to press ahead with this arbitration. I cannot be sure but that in another 12 months' time some other arbitral findings will disturb the somewhat uncertain pattern of international practice in this regard and we may not get such a favourable chance again. I would like to know in terms more specific than the Minister for Foreign Affairs used last week what the reason is for this delay. Perhaps the Taoiseach will not be able to tell me off the top of his head and I will understand if he cannot but I would like to know the reason, whether anyone on our side is to blame and, if not, whether the Taoiseach will take a personal interest in pushing this thing ahead to a satisfactory conclusion as soon as possible.
: The Chair would point out that No. 3 is before the House and, with No. 3, we are taking No. 5 also. We have a great many Estimates to get through before seven o'clock.
: Would the Taoiseach indicate if the Government will move token Estimates later in the year so that we can have a further discussion on some of the very important Estimates which are being taken here today?
In relation to his own Department, why are there two separate subheads in regard to what would seem to be the same general activity of information on public relations services? On page 7 of the Book of Estimates under subhead D there is a sum of £6,000, the same figure as that in 1977. In the details this is marked down as publicity, bulletins, booklets and so on whereas, under subhead A, there is an allocation of £75,700 for the Government Information Services.
: In reply to Deputy Kelly, a great many Deputies try to exploit—I am not making any allegation against Deputy Kelly in this respect—the fact that the Taoiseach is first on the Order Paper for answering questions on Tuesdays and Wednesdays and many questions are submitted to the Taoiseach in his capacity as Taoiseach which are clearly relevant to other Ministers' Departments. It is a very big extension of the Taoiseach's responsibilities, or alleged responsibilities, to try to make him responsible for every aspect of administration in the total concept of Government. The questions that are transferred from the Taoiseach's Department to the appropriate Ministers are questions obviously for those Ministers. That fact should be well known, and is well known, to the Members who submit these questions. Because of the system that has resulted in long delay in reaching certain Ministers' parliamentary questions, depending on the order of seniority of these Ministers, the tendency has been to submit questions to the Taoiseach, in the first instance, in the hope that they would be answered quickly. If that were the case and it were permitted to continue, the Taoiseach would be on his feet all day every day during Question Time.
In relation to the particular question referred to by the Deputy, it appeared to my officials that it was a matter for the Minister for the Environment; and they consulted with the Ceann Comhairle's advisers, as they do in all cases on these matters, before the question was transferred. As to the subject matter of the document to which the Deputy referred, that is a speech issued on the paper of the Government Information Services. I do not know the full context of the speech but I should imagine there was matter in it which was appropriate to the Minister's Department. Therefore, apart altogether from its alleged political content, there must have been— and here I am open to correction— matter in it which it would be appropriate for the Government Information Services to disseminate on behalf of the Minister.
The Deputy suggested that the Government Information Services should not issue a statement on behalf of a Minister on what he regards as a trivial matter because the Minister could have had that speech printed on his own departmental notepaper and published generally. As far as I know, departmental notepaper is a better quality and therefore more expensive notepaper than the Government Information Services notepaper. In the long run perhaps there is a saving to the public service and to the Exchequer in that respect.
: Is the Taoiseach going to abandon the practice of differentiating between party political speeches by Ministers and official ones?
: What the Deputy says is very trivial and I do not think he should pursue it to any great extent.
On the question of the rival claims to the sea around Rockall, I can answer the Deputy's question off the top of my head because I try to keep in touch with important matters. A decision was taken by the Deputy's administration to submit the solution of that problem to a tribunal and there was tentative agreement on the form of tribunal. Since then the position has changed and it has been suggested that a different kind of tribunal would be more appropriate. That matter is being pursued at present with the British authorities and I believe an acceptable form of tribunal will be agreed in the near future.
Deputy Horgan queried £75,000 on subhead A for salaries. That is clearly for the Government Information Services. I understand that Miscellaneous Expenses—booklets, brochures and so on—are met from subhead D—£6,000. I do not see the distinction very clearly, but that is the explanation I have been given.
Vote put and agreed to.