Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The functioning of the relationship between politicians and civil servants is extremely important for a healthy and transparent democracy and each has a separate role in the formulation and delivery of policy. The separateness of functions is critical and it is not the responsibility of a civil servant to be a partisan arm of a political party in Government. Today, the Irish Examinerreports that the strategic communications unit has been involved in training civil servants, inputting directly into departmental management board meetings and drawing in senior officials for the communications strategy. If this is true it would mark a serious blurring of the lines between the political elements of Government and civil servants. It would mark the wholesale subversion of what should be a healthy Government function.

The Government's political record should be the fuel of its political campaigning but civil servants should not be. The drafting of parliamentary answers by the SCU subverts the purpose of parliamentary questions. The purpose of parliamentary questions is to shed light on, and add transparency to, the functioning of Government. How does spin help that? Civil servants are entitled to career progression training for their own development and for the development of the State but now there is a serious concern that the strategic communications unit has been training qualified civil servants in the delivery of the Fine Gael political message. If this is true it would be the corruption of the independence of the Civil Service.

The Taoiseach, Deputy Varadkar, stated at the launch of the SCU that a democracy is only as strong as the relationship of trust between Government and citizens. I agree with that but can anybody say that this whole sorry mess has increased the trust of citizens? The purpose of the strategic communications unit is to get the Government message out there but the strategic communications unit is the news cycle at the moment. How is the Government getting its message out there? By any measure, this is a failure. The political karma of Taoiseach, Deputy Varadkar, getting tripped up by his own €5 million spin factory is lost on no one.

See this speech in context