Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael)

It seems public servants in every Department of State are required to dedicate part of their working day to going through newspapers to see whether they contain matters of relevance to the Ministers and Ministers of State in that Department. They have to put together a file of such clippings and present it to the Minister or Minister of State so he or she can read what the media has to say about him or her. This appears to be a replication of the work being done by the communications unit of the Department of the Taoiseach. At a time when the Taoiseach and others are rightly speaking about the need for real public service reform, why are the absolutely brilliant young men and women who have gone through the public service examination system and entered the public service being required to dedicate some of their time to cutting out, photocopying and pasting newspaper pieces and presenting them to Ministers? At a time of financial crisis for hundreds of thousands of families, surely public servants should not have to waste their time going through newspapers to find out what is being written about Ministers and Ministers of State. It would be easy to make some fairly radical proposals to deal with this problem. There is no need for facilities of this nature to be provided to Ministers and Ministers of State in every Department. The work that is being done at Government level is being replicated at enormous public cost.

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