Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

In an answer to me last week the Taoiseach said there were 24 staff assigned to the Government secretariat, protocol division and the parliamentary liaison unit. How many of these 24 are assigned to the parliamentary liaison unit? What is their rank? Are they deputy secretaries, assistant secretaries or principal officers? Rather like the strategic communications unit, this appears to be something which could have a lot of mission creep. When it was first introduced the indication, as now, was that it was to deal with minority members of the Government. It is worth reminding the Taoiseach that Parliament is made up of a variety of different parties and Independents, not all of whom are either in or supporting the Government with confidence and supply. If there is an information structure for liaison, explanation and information about initiatives being undertaken by the Government it is right that, as with the strategic communications unit, that kind of information is available on an equal basis to all the parties and all the Members of the Oireachtas. Otherwise, it smacks of more resources being devoted to Government for information purposes in the context of Government information services with many staff, as the Taoiseach said in his reply of last week.

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