Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

Our concern is that additional resources are being spent on a strategic communications unit that is designed to burnish Fine Gael's involvement in government for political purposes. Has an extra allocation of €900,000 been made to the Department of the Taoiseach for additional staff in the context of this communications campaign in addition to the €5 million added in the budget for this year? If one adds in the additional social media spend that the Taoiseach identified in terms of use of social media for messages and so on, it appears that it will now cost a minimum of €6 million this year to fund this unit which seems to many Members to be doing the kind of political messages for which political parties receive a political party and leader's allowance separate from administering Departments and the Government as a whole.

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