The Minister replied to a supplementary question which I had not arrived at. That is the reply by the Government Information Services on last Sunday week when Mr. Joseph Jennings, head of the Government Information Services, emphatically denied that such a report existed. I suggest that a major cover-up was taking place in her Department. She has a type of Watergate within her Department. I would like to know who is trying to protect whom? There was a basic denial of the existence of the report. Yet today she conceded that the report exists. The head of the Government Information Services told a blatant lie to RTE.

The Deputy will have to withdraw that remark.

I will withdraw the word "lie"; but the head of the Government Information Services, one of the national handlers, misled RTE and the people of this country about a report on fraudulent social welfare claims in general but particularly in Border areas.

The Deputy is now making a speech.

Could the Minister let me know why the Government Information Services denied the existence of the report of RTE? Could she also let me know why, in a written reply which I obtained yesterday, she informed me that it was estimated that there were 4,000 cases of fraud involving social welfare payments, with overpayments in the region of £3 million, in 1985. Yet she said there were only 187 prosecutions for social welfare fraudulent offences in 1984. Can I interpret from those figures that there was an increase from 187 cases of fraudulent social welfare claims in 1984 to 4,000 in 1985? Is that a fair assumption?

I am sorry that the Deputy is asking me questions which refer to questions asked yesterday. I will have to treat them as separate questions. On the question about the GIS I have, both in my original answer and in the remarks I made a few moments ago, dealt fully with the sequence of events there and I consider that the question has been answered as fully and as frankly as possible.

Could I ask that the questions which are now being given for written reply be withdrawn?

The Deputy can make that request in the General Office.

Do I have to do it before a specific time?

Before 4 o'clock.