Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 20 January 2015
600. Deputy Lucinda Creighton asked the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport further to Parliamentary Questions Nos. 641 and 642 of 16 December 2014, the number of meetings between the Minister or Minister of State and the management advisory committee, MAC, for the years 2011 to 2014, inclusive; the number of meetings of the MAC for the years 2011 to 2014, inclusive; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [2456/15]
View answerI refer the Deputy to Dáil Questions Nos. 641 and 642 of 16th of December 2014. The position remains the same.
The information requested by the Deputy would require an inordinate amount of time to compile as the number of meetings involved is quite substantial.
The Management Board (MB) of the Department is comprised of the Secretary General and currently five Assistant Secretaries. Meetings of the MB normally take place every Tuesday morning with the only exceptions to this being the month of August and the Christmas/New Year period and are typically also attended by the Secretary to the MB. The special Advisor to the Minister and a representative from the Minister of States' Office would also attend for a standard agenda item of "Ministerial, Government and Oireachtas Business". Other Departmental civil servants may be required to attend where agenda items are of direct relevance to them or their areas of responsibility.
The Ministerial Management Board (MMB) is comprised of the Minister, Minister of State and the MB. Meetings of the MMB normally take place once a month, again with the exception of August and Christmas/New Year, and are also attended by the Secretary to the MB, the Advisors to the Ministers and the Private Secretaries to the Ministers and the Secretary General. The Financial Report is a standard agenda item for every meeting and typically the Principal Officer and a number of his staff from the Departments' Finance Division would attend for this item. As with MB meetings, where a specific item is raised, the relevant Departmental civil servant may be requested to attend.
Neither I or my Ministerial colleagues have held any separate meetings with the MB as a whole outside of the scheduled monthly Ministerial Management Board meetings. We would naturally have various formal and informal discussions with individual members of the MB where necessary on issues across the range of their Departmental responsibilities and it would be impossible to produce a statistical summary of these.
