asked the Minister for Finance whether it would be practicable, for reasons of printing economy, to produce both the Bills for Acts, and the final versions of the Acts, when passed, in the same format.

The Stationery Office publish annually the Acts of the Oireachtas "as promulgated" where the format followed is the same as in the printing of the Bills. When the Acts as promulgated have been translated into the other official language, they are published in the definitive bilingual format which uses a smaller size page than is used for Bills. The layout of the pages for this final version has to be changed in order to achieve a page-for-page correspondence between the Irish and English versions of each Act. Even if the paper size used were the same as is used for the Acts as promulgated, it would be necessary to make type setting alterations which would put up costs. Accordingly, I consider that, overall, significant economies would not be achieved by using the same format for both the Bills and the final published versions of the Acts.