Dáil questions cost €10m per year

[Brendan Burgess]

There is a report in Page 8 of today's Irish Times with a league table of who asked how many Dáil questions.

I believe that the cost is far higher as the answers would have to be vetted by senior civil servants who should be focussed on more critical issues.

Bernard Durkan has asked 528 questions in the last 4 months.

There should be some severe limitation to them, so that they would have to prioritise the really important questions.

Or they should get the information in some other manner.

Brendan

 

[z107]

Why is it 'costing €10m a year'?
Where is all this money ending up?

 

[Staples]

I believe that the cost is far higher as the answers would have to be vetted by senior civil servants who should be focussed on more critical issues.

Vetted? They're produced by civil servants. They're read out by Ministers.

Parliamentary Questions (PQs) have long been the bane of civil servants' working lives and, yes, can represent a significant distraction from one's core responsibilities.

But, hey, that's democracy.

 

[liaconn]

Some of the problems are:

TDs asking questions that have already been posed recently by other TDs
TDs asking the same question, with slight variation, on several occasions
TDs asking questions that are unclear
TDs asking questions where the information requested is already available on websites and in reports
TDs asking questions that require huge collating of figures etc when a properly scoped request would have saved a lot of work.

While it is important that the opposition can question the Government, it should not be done in a way that unnecessarily wastes Civil Servants' time and tax payers money, and delays other important work being finished by deadline.

 

[liaconn]

Vetted? They're produced by civil servants. They're read out by Ministers.

Parliamentary Questions (PQs) have long been the bane of civil servants' working lives and, yes, can represent a significant distraction from one's core responsibilities.

But, hey, that's democracy.

They do have to be vetted by senior civil servants to ensure the facts are correct and that the answer is of high quality. They are produced by more junior civil servants.

 

[boris]

We get a standard PQ in for our section once a year over how much was spent on postage for the previous year.

The wheels of democracy will grind to a halt if we don't answer that one!!!!

 

[cork]

Even the questions that Ministers even bother to answer are limited.

They can say - thats a question for the VHI, HSE, Fas etc.

They can distance themselves pretty easily.

The quangos can act as a line of first defence for the ministers.

They can get any without answering questions.