Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 21 November 2017
582. Deputy Mattie McGrath asked the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection the average costs associated with processing and answering written and oral parliamentary questions; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [49123/17]
Amharc ar fhreagraThe Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection (DEASP) has always been committed to being as transparent and helpful as possible to all members of the Oireachtas. In this regard the Department has set up dedicated enquiry telephone lines and specific email addresses for each section in the Department solely for the purpose of dealing with queries from members of the Oireachtas in relation to individual social welfare cases/claims. This also helps reduce the costs of answering Parliamentary Questions (PQs).
DEASP receives one of the highest number of PQs of all Government departments. In 2017 to date, nearly 4,000 PQs were tabled to the Department. There were approximately 3,676 Written PQs and 316 Oral/Priority PQs. The majority of PQs refer to the status of claims by individuals in relation to the variety of schemes administered by the Department.
There are approximately 600 staff members of varying grades involved at some level in distributing, answering and submitting PQs for approval across the Department. The length of time spent on dealing with PQs can vary from a few minutes to a number of hours per week. As the processing of answering PQs is undertaken as part of the normal day to day work of the individual sections within the Department it is not possible to readily isolate the costs of processing PQs from the overall administrative costs of the Department.
