Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Just for clarity, I was very involved in the establishment of the strategic communications unit. It was my initiative. However, if Deputies check the Dáil record, it was after the controversies around its setting up that I took a decision to step back. A budget was allocated, a memo was brought to Cabinet, the Cabinet agreed a work programme and the Secretary General of my Department put in place a governance structure. After that, I stepped back from any of the day to day operations, from involvement in decisions on advertisements, what they looked like, where they were placed and so forth. Obviously, however, I had an interest in the core work of the unit, whether it was the single identity, the www.gov.iewebsite or some of the campaigns that were run. My view is that the Government is the Government, by the way. I do not believe that I am the Government. I am the head of Government but am not the Government. I believe in a whole-of-government approach and do not believe that Government should operate in silos, with every Department operating almost as an independent republic. I believe in joined up Government. That is a philosophy of mine but I understand it is one that some people might not share. It made sense to me, for example, that when we were informing the self employed about new rights and entitlements that we would not have one campaign being run by the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection on their social insurance rights, a separate campaign being run by the Department of Finance about increases in their tax credits and yet another campaign being run by the Department of Business, Enterprise and Innovation on supports for entrepreneurs. Instead, we would put it all together in a single Government information campaign-----

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