Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael)

The Taoiseach has repeatedly said that this unit constitutes a significant saving on other Departments. Deputy Kenny tabled a parliamentary question on the spending by other Departments on media monitoring activities. I am sure it will come as a huge surprise to the Taoiseach to discover that those other Departments are spending over €500,000 every year on top of the €344,000 he says his Department is spending. Where are these great economies? If all other Ministers decide they need to replicate these activities and defend them as being important to their work, it seems the Taoiseach's defence of this centralised media monitoring unit is falling asunder. Will the Taoiseach consider reviewing all these activities? If we are to have a consolidated central activity, we should make sure that these other units are closed down. The public might then feel properly served.

Is the work of this unit essentially partisan? It is defending the Government from the complaints of others made against it. If it is to be in the public interest, does the unit look at where the Government is over represented in the media? We recently witnessed an astonishing event where the Chairman of the Joint Committee on Communications, Energy and Natural Resources appeared to be using analysis of media coverage to present a distorted view of what Members of this House and the committee were thinking of RTE coverage. Does the Taoiseach's media monitoring unit provide any information to anyone other than Ministers? Does it provide information to Deputies? Does it line up Fianna Fáil contributors to make certain contributions? Is that within its remit, or does the Taoiseach strictly require that nothing of a partisan nature would be promoted by the unit?

See this speech in context