Committee Reports > List of Committees > Joint > 1986 > Committee on the Secondary Legislation of the European Communities (4th Committee) > Report No. 35 - Statutory Instruments [19]

APPENDIX 2

Department of Labour

11 July, 1986.

Clerk

Joint Committee on Secondary Legislation

of the European Communities

Leinster House

Dublin 2

RE: REPORT NO. 32

I am directed by the Minister for Labour to refer to Para. 6 of the above Report, in particular the statement “The Committee can only assume that…the Department must have misunderstood the Committee’s query”.

This assumption is not correct. The position is that the Department did understand the Committee’s query and its response was to refer the Committee to Para. 13 of “Instructions on the Printing and Publication of Statutory Instruments” appended to Circular 4/59 of the Department of Finance dated 13th Bealtaine, 1959 (my minute of 10th January, 1986 refers).

That paragraph stipulates that the explanatory note at the foot of a statutory instrument should be brief and should be limited to describing the general purport of the statutory instrument. An explanation of the reason for making the statutory instrument is, in the opinion of this Department, ruled out. As the Instructions are now presumably the responsibility of the Department of the Public Service, a copy of this letter is being sent to that Department for information and any action considered necessary.

________________________

B. O’Riordain

Principal Officer