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

While the Taoiseach has been busy trying to claim no role in the new marketing unit's actions, a new freedom of information request confirms regular contact between the Taoiseach's chief of staff and the head of the unit, who was recommended by the Taoiseach for the job. One of the problems we discovered in the freedom of information process was that key discussions were shielded from release because they were described as an essential part of preparing a memorandum for Cabinet. It is understood that the unit made or was scheduled to make a presentation to Ministers yesterday. Can the Taoiseach assure the House that this will not be used as another excuse to shield information? Can the Taoiseach explain why the unit has not sought to discuss its plans with Members of the Dáil but is doing the rounds of marketing groups instead? Given that the Taoiseach has asserted central control on the branding and oversight of public advertising, can he explain the decision to spend thousands of euro on a full colour advertisement which was supposedly directed to minimum wage earners last Sunday? The advertisement was placed on the cover of the finance supplement of a business paper, beside an article about what people should do with buoyant dividend income. Does the Taoiseach accept that it is unacceptable to pretend to talk to low income people in an advertisement placed beside the headline "Splash the Cash"? Is this the type of propaganda we can expect from now on?

The core premise of the unit is supposed to be the addressing of a public information gap. The Taoiseach commissioned research on this but decided on priorities and budgets before receiving the results. Amazingly, the priorities for the largest marketing campaign ever run by a Taoiseach's office fit exactly with the Taoiseach's stated policy priorities. Does the Taoiseach agree that there is something fundamentally rotten about him deciding what the public wants to know about before actually asking the public? It would have been easy to carry out research listing a range of public policy issues and asking whether the public was happy with the availability of information in different areas. Perhaps the Taoiseach did not want the feedback that people would support advertising which gave them easier access to figures on hospital waiting lists, homelessness or other areas the Taoiseach believes are receiving too much attention from the media. Fundamentally, this is a political propaganda unit. It is a worrying trend and it is wrong from an ethical perspective.

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