asked the Minister for Industry, Commerce and Tourism (i) the total financial allocation paid to the office of the Director of Consumer Affairs since his appointment, (ii) the total (a) budget, (b) publicity budget allocated to this office for 1980 and (iii) the number and grades of all staff attached to this office on a permanent basis.
Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - Director of Consumer Affairs.
8.
The total allocation of funds to the Office of the Director of Consumer Affairs during 1979 was £26,487. The director's financial allocation for the present year is £95,200. Of this, £28,000 represents his publicity budget.
As to the members and grades of staff attached to the office of the director, I would refer the Deputy to the reply which I gave in that regard to an earlier question on 145 December 1979. As I indicated then, the question of the provision of additional staff is under consideration.
Is the Minister in a position to say whether the publicity budget has been up or down in the last two years?
Since this is the first full year for which there will be a director, obviously it is up.
Of course it is up. But during the course of the debate on the Bill under which this gentleman was appointed comparable lines were drawn between his budget for publicity and that of the Health Education Bureau which had £1 million allocated last year. Is the Minister happy that the kind of money now available is adequate to meet the needs of this office because the director is dealing with a vast number of consumers, many of whom do not even know he is there, to redress any grievance they might have.
I do not think any such comparison could validly be drawn——
There was, by the Minister of State.
There is no question of £1 million or anything even remotely approaching that figure being made to this officer.
He is an anonymous Director of Consumer Affairs.
Is the Minister aware of certain newspaper reports which indicated that the director was refused sanction last year to spend money in relation to the preparation and publication of consumer pamphlets and material? Could the Minister ensure that that kind of sanction would be freely available during 1980?
As far as I am concerned he will get sanction for whatever money is available for him and has been allocated to him.
Thank you very much.
But I cannot give him sanction for anything that has not been allocated to him.
Would the Minister not agree that a couple of thousand pounds or £20,000 odd in terms of consumer expenditure material for all publicity is a rather derisory sum?
That is argument.
It is not a couple of thousand pounds.
Twenty thousand pounds for 3,000,000 people.
9.
asked the Minister for Industry, Commerce and Tourism if he intends to provide a permanent, independent office for the Director of Consumer Affairs; and if so, the action he is taking in this regard.
My Department have for some considerable time been pressing the Office of Public Works to provide extra office accommodation, not only for the Director of Consumer Affairs but to cater for the overall needs of the Department.
The director and his staff are at present accommodated within the premises provided for my Department in the Setanta Centre but it is hoped to move them shortly to premises at Hume Street which have recently been made available by the Office of Public Works.
Would the Minister not agree that it is entirely unsatisfactory having a Director of Consumer Affairs located in his Department, in quite an inaccessible place, with telephone calls and everything else having to be transmitted through his Department? When does the Minister anticipate the director will have an independent office, completely detached from his Department, as it is supposed to be?
I do not accept that because the director is located in my Department he is, therefore, unsuitably located. I am not in the business of providing accommodation. I am in dire need of it for large sections of my Department and cannot get it. The building which I now occupy was designed for one Minister and one Department. There are now three Ministers, three Departments and two Ministers of State operating out of it.
(Interruptions.)
The Board of Works inform me that they will be able to accommodate the Director of Consumer Affairs in a house at No. 13 Hume Street shortly.
The rent had better be cheap.
The old Fine Gael office.
Oh, that would be a very unsuitable location.
10.
asked the Minister for Industry, Commerce and Tourism if he will outline the manner in which moneys are allocated to the Director of Consumer Affairs, and if ministerial sanction is required for the expending of such moneys.
Moneys are allocated for the office of the Director of Consumer Affairs through the vote for the Department of Industry, Commerce and Tourism in the same way as for other offices also funded by me and independent in law in discharge of their function such as the Office of the Examiner of Restrictive Practices, the Restrictive Practices Commission and the Registry of Friendly Societies.
However, the provision of moneys in a Vote does not of itself constitute authority to spend. Furthermore, section 27 of the Consumer Information Act, 1978, provides that "the expenses incurred by ... the Director in the administration of this Act, shall, to such extent as may be sanctioned by the Minister for Finance be paid out of moneys provided by the Oireachtas". The requirement to procure the sanction of the Minister for Finance is not unusual and I do not expect that this will constitute an undue constraint on the activities of the director.
Might I ask the Minister if, as was expected, the Office of the Director of Consumer Affairs will have a specific subhead in the Estimates published annually, because he is lumped in with the Minister's allocation and nobody can know, except through Parliamentary Question, what this particular office is getting?
No, there is not a separate subhead for it.
I know that. Why not?
I would imagine that it is probably because the office is only being set up at present and what is likely to be expended there could not be foretold with any accuracy. I do not know whether after the office has been in existence for some time it will have a separate subhead. It allows greater financial flexibility to operate under the general Vote of the Department.
In the wrong direction.
Will the Minister seek the sanction or approval of the Committee of Public Accounts and the Comptroller and Auditor General for the inclusion of a different subhead?
I do not think that the Comptroller and Auditor General or the Committee of Public Accounts have anything to do with it.
If the Minister were serious he would ensure that it would have a subhead for itself. Therefore, his seriousness must be questioned in this matter.