David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I will make a final recommendation to Mr. Fraser and offer some advice, if he is interested in taking advice, regarding the establishment of units of this sensitivity in future. By the way, those of us who have concerns about the operation of the unit are not against streamlining or professionalising communications. That is a good thing and one of the issues that has been lost in all of this is that this needs to be done to address the silo mentality we have. I return to my earlier comment regarding the lack of a metric for measuring the performance of the unit and setting out the logic for such a unit, the reasons for its establishment, what it was trying to achieve and what would be the benchmarks and performance indicators. Teachta Connolly noted there was something in a memorandum that was submitted to government. We have not seen anything of that significance. The valuable lesson that should be learned is the need to set out the logic, processes and benchmarks and measure these against the logic for setting up the unit in the first place. That did not happen in the case of the strategic communications unit, which is the reason it was opened and shut down in a period of approximately five months. Mr. Fraser has to take responsibility for that.