John Bruton
Question:3 Mr. J. Bruton asked the Taoiseach if it is proposed to introduce a statistics Bill, in accordance with his promise to that effect on 3 June 1992 in Dáil Éireann.
Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - Statistics Bill.
It is hoped that the statistics Bill will be submitted to Government for approval within the next three weeks. Subject to that approval, and following normal practice, it is expected that the Bill will be published within a week of the Government's decision.
Will the Minister of State indicate whether it is proposed under this Bill to confer overall responsibility for the publication of all Government statistics on the Central Statistics Office?
The Deputy will be aware of the practice in this House whereby one does not go into a great amount of detail on the contents of a Bill before it is submitted to Cabinet. Nevertheless, I can tell the Deputy that the statistics Bill is derived in the main from the recommendations contained in the 1985 document A New Institutional Structure for the Central Statistics Office.
Will the Minister agree that one of the central recommendations in the report was that overall responsibility for statistics should be invested in the Central Statistics Office to ensure consistent and comparable statistics right across the Government service? Will the Minister of State use his influence to ensure that the Government agrees to a proposal along those lines so that we will have proper statistics and a good basis for decision making?
I assure the Deputy that I will do that. In accordance with the 1985 document, I shall be seeking to ensure that the Central Statistics Office is given overall responsibility for the collection and publication of statistics. I shall also try to ensure that there are improvements in the collection, compilation, extraction and dissemination of statistics. I hope that when he has seen it the Deputy will agree that all the recommendations in the report are included in the Bill.
I compliment the Minister on giving a satisfactory answer to my question. I invite him to coach the Taoiseach on how this is done.
Will the statistics Bill include any reference to the number of occasions on which a Government publicly committed to Dáil reform used outside venues to make important announcements which should have been made in the Dáil?
Please, Deputy, there is no going back over questions. Ceist 4, le do thoil. We are now embarking on questions nominated for priority to which a time limit of 20 minutes only applies under Standing Orders.