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

Last week, the Taoiseach told the Dáil his Department needed to provide a counter-balance to the media, which he believes do not cover enough good news. The Taoiseach said 80% of news was negative and that it should really be approximately 50% at most. There will be a new strategy, the third in two years, and I am interested in how that new commitment will be reflected in it. The Secretary General is supposed to be chairing an interdepartmental group to ensure that the new strategic communications unit will not be politicised. However, the unit has begun to spend money on advertising and branding before the oversight group has even started its work. After a lengthy delay, we have received replies to a number of freedom of information requests we submitted concerning the unit. It will surprise no one that the head of the unit is most frequently in contact with the Taoiseach's political staff. In fact, emails between the Taoiseach's chief of staff and the head of the unit have been withheld on the basis of a claim that they are part of the deliberative process. Can the Taoiseach explain why the head of a supposedly non-political unit seems to have more contact with political staff in the Department than with his Civil Service peers? My overarching concern is what I see as the creeping politicisation of the State service in pursuit of a party political goal, which is something that must be guarded against at all costs.

I echo what other Deputies have said on the housing crisis, which is a scandal, and what they have said about attempts to normalise it. I do not go for international comparisons or statistics because, every week, I meet people who are in appalling circumstances, from homelessness to the inability to get a house, having to stay with their parents and right along the continuum. It is everywhere and is a huge blight on our society and on our values as a country. We should not, in any shape or form, try to trivialise it or use language that understates the reality of the housing scandal for so many families and so many children in our community. We judge ourselves by our own standards and by what we believe to be best - nothing else. It is a very sad day when there are so many people in such dire circumstances in respect of housing, whether it is because of their rent or homelessness itself.

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