Matt Carthy (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I concur with Deputy Catherine Murphy. I do not understand why an organisation such as Children's Health Ireland would be required to spend €90,000 in a year on a contract for a public relations company. We see this with a number of State agencies. While in the overall budgets these might seem like small amounts of money, why would a State agency that is charged with building a children's hospital and providing for children's health need to commission a stand-alone PR company to carry out its work?

The response from Children's Health Ireland outlines part of the tender process that was employed, but it does not outline the rationale as to why this was required in the first place. Similarly, there was a very large outlay of funding of in excess of €121,000 on the Combined Media company. We should follow up with a further letter to Children's Health Ireland requesting the rationale for tendering for outside companies to do work that I would have thought should be available within the public service.