Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)

Last week a Cabinet Minister gave an extensive media briefing about policy on low-paid workers without clearing it with the Taoiseach or the Cabinet. This set off days of briefings and counter-briefings with no one any the wiser on Government policy and the Minister's personal agenda. This was unfortunate but not an isolated incident. In the past three weeks the Taoiseach and the Minister for Finance, Deputy Noonan, have had to deal with the fall-out from comments by other Ministers because they got mixed up, misspoke, were taken out of context or simply got it wrong.

I know the Taoiseach's preferred approach to the Minister, Deputy Varadkar, and maybe other Ministers, might be simply to ignore what he says. However, an analysis done this afternoon shows that his Sunday interview has been covered by more than 2,200 media outlets around the world so far. Similarly a review published today uses the now corrected statement by the Minister, Deputy Howlin, on restructuring to claim that Ireland accepts that restructuring is inevitable. I am conscious that Ministers are still operating to the standard set in Opposition, where all that basically mattered was the size of the headline.

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