Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I believe that the Taoiseach doth protest too much on this matter. I am not entirely clear what is his assertion of his own personal conspiracy theory. I am not entirely impressed with the Taoiseach's political priorities. In budget 2018 the strategic communications unit was allocated €5 million. I will put this in context. This is one third of the additional money that was promised for mental health - so much for the Taoiseach's political priorities. This communications unit is now mired in scandal. The Taoiseach can rant and rave, he can point the finger and he can talk about conspiracy theories but that is now where it is at.

He said in October that there would be no political advertising or promotion of political parties and that the Civil Service and public sector code would continue to apply in respect of this unit, and this has clearly not been the case. That was a piece of spin in and of itself. The Taoiseach's spin unit has followed a strategy to promote Fine Gael in newspapers in a very underhand and unprincipled way by directing editors to present paid-for political advertising as regular news articles. He referred to the email courtesy of Ellen Coyne, who is not on these benches but on the media bench above. The email stated: "Part of our deal is that we don't have any moniker such as "Advertorial" or "special feature" or anything like that - it simply runs as normal editorial." The Taoiseach is right - this referred to the Creative Ireland campaign. However, the Taoiseach also knows that this was very explicitly the template to be used for all other adverts and that this strategy was explicitly articulated. In this email, the words I have just put on the record were followed by the words, "I do hope your editorial team understands this". I am very sure editorial teams fully understood it. This strategy is underhand and clearly designed for party political promotion. It was carried out using not just public money, but the resources of the Civil Service. As the Taoiseach knows, the Civil Service is prohibited from being used to advance the party political objectives of whomsoever is in government. This unit was not about informing citizens-----

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