Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

We will support the motion and its idea of disbanding the strategic communications unit. It was ironic that, despite spending €5 million on slick PR and gathering the best and brightest minds in communications and social media, the Taoiseach revealed in a few minutes of hubris in Washington the reality of how the Government and the elite worked. Either the Government is not spending enough on the spin department or it should look for a refund from Mr. Concannon and company.

I also note that the review of the strategic communications unit set up by the Taoiseach and presided over by Mr. Martin Fraser is due to reveal its findings at the end of the week, but not many of us will be holding our breath for a review conducted by a top civil servant in the Department of the Taoiseach to find anything damning or critical of the Taoiseach's decisions or his spin unit. We do not believe the unit operates at arm's length from the Government or the Civil Service. As the Irish Examinerrevealed today, it is woven into the heart of government. It has drafted parliamentary replies on behalf of the Government and promoted the PPS card in the event that it received critical public attention.

What I am puzzled by is the mock outrage in some quarters that the strategic communications unit is politicising the Civil Service. I am not referring to the ordinary rank and file civil servants with whom we deal in Leinster House on a daily basis, but does anyone believe the highest level of the Civil Service is not politicised and that, at the very top, permanent officials in the various Departments do not hold the same world view as the Tánaiste's party and Fianna Fáil, the two largest parties in the country, and that they do not hold the same commitment to the economic and social order and policies both parties advocate and advance? We certainly do not believe it. The idea that the top levels of the Civil Service are non-political and above party politics is farcical. Equally, the idea that the regional newspapers were not leaned on to present the national development plan in a certain light is also farcical. They were leaned on. It was an opportunity to present certain Fine Gael candidates in a good light.

No one is fooled by the review or the Taoiseach's protest that "Fianna Fáil did it in the past." I do not doubt that it did, but when one's defence is that Fianna Fáil did something, one is really in trouble. However, I agree with one thing that has been stated, namely, that this issue is distracting from the work of the Government. I would go further and say the national development plan and Project Ireland 2040 are also about distracting from the reality of the work in which this and previous Governments have failed us. I look forward to considering Project Ireland 2040 and its fantasy of a bright future, as I am sure many people do as they wait in the queue for health services and public transport, as they wait on gridlocked motorways in trying to travel to and from work and as those who are homeless and living in hotel accommodation wait for homes. It will, undoubtedly, comfort them that, at some point in the future, the Taoiseach and company have a great little country planned for them, one that will be built and financed by their friends in the private sector who build the homes for which we pay lucratively but never own and one that is guaranteed to make plenty of money for those who own private health companies or are private providers of public transport services.

None of the Government's plan will deliver the services that we need now or will need in 2040. The spin unit cannot spin that reality or spin away the reality of homelessness, full buses, crowded hospitals, etc. It will need much more than €5 million to fool all of the people all of the time.

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