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

Yes, Cathaoirleach, and it is in relation to the public relations expenditure, which is something that we have seen in the accounts of a number of statutory bodies. We have had particular discussions around Irish Water and its grid. Irish Water springs to mind where one has statutory bodies that have no competitors spending tens of thousands of euro, and in some cases hundreds of thousands of euro, on PR exercises.

I see that Children's Health Ireland has referenced a public information campaign, which was rolled out in an integrated manner and launched by the CHI at the Connolly Hospital. All of that is very laudable but at some point there needs to be an analysis done on whether there is a better streamlined mechanism of arranging and managing PR because if every statutory body, Government Department and semi-State spends huge sums on public relations then there must be an argument for a more efficient way of doing things. I would appreciate if we could mark a note for our work programme to see if there is a mechanism, through the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform or another appropriate Department, to analyse whether public savings can be made across all of these bodies.