Bertie Ahern (Dublin Central, Fianna Fail)

The communications unit is staffed and run to Civil Service standards. The information it documents is provided to several hundred people in Departments, merely giving the headlines of the hour or the day and, where necessary, giving transcripts to Departments. Previously, Departments used to source and purchase this information from outside companies, with several Departments sourcing the same information from the same or different companies at great cost to the State. The unit is not engaged in monitoring of stories. It provides the news stories or headlines of the day to Departments to make press officers and key individuals in Departments, who serve the public, aware of current issues. It has no connection with the political system. Neither is it connected with the Government Information Service, unless to provide information for the GIS, which provides a service to the Government. The officials of the unit do their job as civil servants. They rotate within and between various Departments. The unit does not and has never had a function of the kind described by the Deputy.

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