asked the Minister for Justice the reason members of the Garda Síochána are not permitted to drive illegally parked motor vehicles to pounds.

Members of the Garda Síochána are authorised under article 4 of the Road Traffic (Removal, Storage and Disposal of Vehicles) Regulations 1971 to remove and store vehicles which have been illegally parked.

We have had enough of this.

The regulations do not specify the method to be employed for such removal. On occasions when unlawfully parked vehicles have been found with keys in the ignition they have been driven to the pound by members of the force. It is not Garda policy, however, to issue sets of keys to gardaí to enable locked unlawfully parked vehicles to be opened and driven to the pound.

(Cavan-Monaghan): With the permission of the Chair, I wish to ask a supplementary question on Question No. 2. Does the Minister know whether any sergeants who are on the beat from Cork stations have been promoted within the last 25 years?

The Deputy asked this question and the Minister answered it.

(Cavan-Monaghan): No, he did not.

He said a sergeant. I do not know where he was from.

(Cavan-Monaghan): No, he did not answer. Through the Chair, would the Minister answer that question, please?

I have answered that question. The matter of promotion from that rank is a matter for the commissioner.

(Cavan-Monaghan): I accept that. I am suggesting to the Minister that if no sergeants have been promoted from these stations in the last 25 years, it would appear that this requires some explanation as to the fitness of the sergeants for the original promotion?

Or as to why they were not promoted.

Does Deputy Barry Desmond wish to ask a supplementary question?

I should like to hear the reply.

I have answered the question already. I have stated that there were 15 promotions in the past ten years.

(Cavan-Monaghan): From where?

From the specific area about which the Deputy is speaking—Cork city.

The Minister has not replied.

I have replied.

I should like to hear the reply, then.

Question No. 4.

The Minister has made his maiden speech.

We have had two cases where the Minister has proceeded to answer a following question before the preceding one was concluded. Very properly, the Chair allowed the supplementary, but allowed the Minister to complete the previous question when it could not be heard. I suggest that we should proceed in an orderly way, complete the supplementary on each question and then go to the next.

I asked for the co-operation of Deputies so that we might proceed in an orderly way. We are reaching a stage now where, when the Minister replies, he is told—and it is insisted, on—that he has not replied. There is nothing that the Chair can do about that.

Surely where the Chair has allowed a supplementary, he should ensure that the Minister does not proceed with the following question until this supplementary is heard? That is what is causing the disorder.

On a point of order raised by the Deputy, Deputy FitzGerald places his case on a claim that the Minister is not replying before supplementary questions are concluded. I should have thought that supplementary questions are concluded when the Chair so rules, not when individual Members in the Opposition so rule.

Exactly. That is my point.

If the Chair has ruled that supplementaries have been concluded, it is open to the Opposition by continuing to engage in a hassling chorus, to suggest that they have not concluded.

Thanks for the lecture.

If it is to be lectures, it might as well be even handed, otherwise we have eight or nine different judges on when supplementaries have concluded.

That is exactly what happened. Perhaps the Minister was not listening.

One could not but hear.

What happened was that a supplementary was asked and the Chair asked Deputy Fitzpatrick to wait until the Minister finished the following question before allowing a supplementary. I am suggesting that that procedure of the Chair in asking the Deputy to wait and allowing the Minister to continue is an incorrect procedure. The correct procedure would have been to ask the Minister to stop—

The Ceann Comhairle called the question.

——and to allow the supplementaries. That would be more orderly.

Question No. 4.

(Cavan-Monaghan): So, we have reached a stage that, when the Taoiseach is not here, Ministers can behave as they like.

On a point of order. I have patiently waited.