With the greatest of respect, I appreciate staff difficulties, but even when there are 600 questions we all know that questions from No. 50 onwards will not be taken on a particular day; why then does this pretence apply, of supposing that in terms of urgency of deciding whether they are in or out of order, one question is ranked the same as the other? In regard to the other point which the Chair was kind enough to make in response to what I said a few moments ago — and I should like to know if it is the case — that the Government shares a collective responsibility for a situation — how am I to explore the manner in which they have discharged that responsibility better than by inquiring from the Taoiseach, who makes a virtue and publicity plus for himself, when it suits him, out of pre-empting, moving in on and ursurping the functions which by law, not by convention, are attributable to other members of the Government?

That ruling on the question of collective responsibility dates from the start of the State.

If it is a collective responsibility I submit that it cannot possibly preclude any Deputy here from inquiring about the part personally played by a member of the Government in a particular episode. The fact that that part has been personally played in a Department other than his own cannot be a reason for making it immune from inquiry here. That is like the lawyer's paradox that it is cheaper to kill a man than to injure him.

The rule is that you cannot inquire into relations between Ministers.

I hope that the Deputy will not apply that paradox to me.

Our questions here are directed to Ministers so that they may be answerable for the area of responsibility allocated to them. They are so answerable, and in the event of major default a Minister may feel it necessary to resign because of his failure in his own Ministry. That is comparative and parallel with the question of collective responsibility. That being so, if we hold Ministers responsible individually for their Departments within the overall context of collective responsibility, on what grounds can Ministers not be held responsible when they go outside their Departments? That seems to introduce a very dangerous principle indeed under which Ministers can avoid responsibility so long as they do other Ministers' work and not their own. I cannot see that democracy will benefit from pressing that theory.

It is a matter of relations between Ministers and somethings about which we cannot ask questions. There are certain situations of collective responsibility and certain decisions are taken by Ministers in respect of their own Departments.

We can deal with Ministers when they act in relation to their own Departments and they are answerable to us, but it is dangerous in a democratic system if Ministers act outside their own Departments and are not answerable to the House. That is the principle you seem to be introducing. We must challenge that if we are to have any concept of answerability of the Government to the Dáil.

Where a Minister may take on a certain responsibility he would do so at the behest of the Government, he would be answerable to the Government and the Government would accept responsibility for him.

We are not talking of that. We are not talking of the Government asking the Minister to do something. We are talking of a Minister — in fact the Taoiseach — undertaking something in an area which is the responsibility of somebody else. It is a different situation. Is the Taoiseach not answerable for his actions as long as they do not come within the ambit of his own authority? It is precisely that danger that the country fears at present.

Can we start Question Time?

It is a responsibility which he is not willing to stand over and defend in this House at Question Time. That is all I have been able to observe from this episode.