Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

The vast majority of the people to whom the Deputy refers deal with the information side of a Department. They provide information services. As the Deputy will be aware, there is a plethora of people interested in what is happening in the Department of Social and Family Affairs such as people in voluntary organisations and apart from the wider public who need to access information. There is often talk in this House about the need for public service organisations to be efficient in that regard. It must be recognised that the vast majority of this work relates to that side of the work of Departments rather than it being a case of press management of ministerial offices or Government issues specifically.

I do not have the details to hand beyond the reply but it was mentioned before that we should consider whether the service could be centralised and I made inquiries. When a tender was put out asking for one supplier to provide the requirements for all Departments, it showed that it was going to be more expensive than allowing each Department to provide for itself. It should be noted that Departments have specialised requirements which are different from Department to Department. For instance, the requirements of the Department of Finance are different to those of the Department of Arts, Sport and Tourism. While one would have thought it would be a good idea to centralise the service, when this was examined it was discovered that it would not be less expensive.

See this speech in context