Dáil Éireann Debate, Wednesday - 17 October 2012
143. Deputy Ann Phelan asked the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform the costs of members putting Parliamentary Questions to Dáil Éireann; the costs involved; if there is an average time taken to answer all questions put before Dáil Éireann. [45261/12]
View answerI am not aware that any study has been carried out into the cost of members putting Parliamentary Questions to Dáil Eireann or the cost to the Exchequer of answering Parliamentary Questions. Whether such a study would produce meaningful financial information is debatable. The cost of answering a Parliamentary Question and indeed the time taken to answer all questions will vary considerably according to the nature of the question asked. This would inevitably result in significant differences in the costs among Departments and indeed within a Department from time to time.
No staff in my Department are assigned full time to dealing with Parliamentary Questions. Parliamentary Questions are dealt with, as the need arises, by the staff in the sections dealing with the particular issue(s) raised in individual Parliamentary Questions. The number and level of staff and the time spent on an individual answer depends on the complexity and importance of the issue raised the form in which the information exists in the Department and the form of the proposed response, i.e. whether oral or written. Since my own Department was established in 2011 and to date in 2012 I have responded to some 1,600 Parliamentary Questions. Undoubtedly a considerable amount of time is spent answering all these questions however it is not possible to quantify the cost for the reasons outlined above.
As the processing of individual Parliamentary Questions is undertaken as part of the normal day to day work of individual sections within Departments it would be unnecessarily burdensome to isolate the administrative costs of processing Parliamentary Questions from the overall administrative costs of each Department.
It may be of interest to the Deputy to learn that my Department is currently exploring a range of options with a view to securing process improvement and time savings in responding to PQs.
