Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The two questions relate towww.merrionstreet.ieand the Government information service. The Taoiseach will remember that at one stage he promised to reduce the number of staff operating in the Government information service by a third. Of course, that is another broken promise in a long list of them. A wider concern is the increasing politicisation of this area and the Government information service in general. The Taoiseach is not the only member of the Government fond of telling stories, with the Army at automated teller machines just the latest one. As the election gets closer, it is important that the abuse of the system does not get entirely out of hand. The Taoiseach has a responsibility in that regard.

The Taoiseach's Government sees spin as central to everything it does and the Taoiseach's first letter to the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Deputy Howlin, was to ask for money for Fine Gael's press officer to take charge of selling messages on the economy in the Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation. The concern with www.merrionstreet.ieis how it has gone from being quite a broad service to one which is increasingly political. A good example of this relates to materials in Operation Thor, as this supposedly major initiative amounted to less than €28,000 per Garda district per month, with some districts losing money because of overtime restrictions. Nevertheless, the Taoiseach's Department is spending public money making claims which simply have no link to reality.

Will the Taoiseach explain what measures, if any, he has in place to prevent the abuse of Civil Service media and advertising resources over the next three months? That is a very important point, given that we are on the cusp of a general election. If media monitoring is one of the roles, why was Mr. Cliff Taylor's article in The Irish Timeson 22 August not picked up? This relates to a previous issue, the obstacles that are presenting in the release of documentation to the commission of investigation into sale of assets by IBRC. The article outlined the legal concerns being experienced by the inquiry into Siteserv and other deals but we were told by the Taoiseach's Department that the Taoiseach was only told about these concerns last Friday, when the judge formally wrote to him.

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