A co-leader of the Social Democrats has been told that an ‘administrative oversight’ in the Department of Trade and Employment led to a delay in her receiving an answer to a parliamentary question of Pat Breen.
Deputy Catherine Murphy is among the TDs who have called for clarity from the Junior Minister, after it emerged that he had passed an invitation from businessman David McCourt to then-Minister Denis Naughten.
A consortium led by Mr. McCourt is now the sole remaining bidder for the National Broadband Plan, and the controversy over his meetings with the Communnications Minister led Denis Naughten to resign from that role.
Catherine Murphy today lodged a complaint with the Office of the Ceann Comhairle after a Paliamentary Question she asked of Pat Breen, which was due to be answered by last Thursday, had not been responded to.
Tonight, Minister Breen’s Department says the error was their’s, and that he furnished the answer before the deadline.
They’re blaming an administrative error and have apologised to Deputy Murphy.
The following statement has been issued by the Office of the Minister for Trade, Employment, Business, EU Digital Single Market & Data Protection.
Minister Breen did not refuse to answer the PQ referred to by Deputy Murphy. The PQ was down for answer by Minister Humphreys.
There was a large volume of PQs, both Oral and Written, to be processed in the Department of Business, Enterprise and Innovation on Thursday. The Department advised the Questions Office on Thursday evening that a small number of replies, including this one, would be late.
The PQ was directed at Minister Humphreys and was approved by her on Friday but due to an administrative oversight in the Department, the reply was not returned to the Questions Office. This mistake was brought to the Department’s attention this morning and the reply was immediately returned.
Minister Breen approved the content of the reply in respect of himself on Thursday and it should be noted that there was no additional information in the reply in respect of Minister Breen other than what was already in the public domain.
The Department has apologised to Deputy Murphy for the delay.
