Brian Stanley (Laois, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome this motion. I heard the defence by the Tánaiste earlier on. I think he is either confused or deliberately missing the point. Communications, political or otherwise, must not be about confusion, contradiction or concealment. They must be about clarity and facts. Leo's good news department was not created for clarity and truth but for confusion. We now have this unit at a cost of €5 million to the taxpayer which is basically being used as a Fine Gael propaganda machine to hoodwink taxpayers using their own money. This unit is about filtering the Taoiseach's party's true politics and its lack of achievement in housing, workers' rights, health, climate change and so on. There are basic strands to a democratic open state. One is that the State puts across the truth of its actions and that they can be openly debated. This Government unit has spent more than €182,000 of the €5 million allocated to it to distort that. I have seen huge two-page spreads in the local media in County Laois on the national planning framework where old news is passed off as "new happy stories" from Leo's good news department. The crux of the matter was that there was no advertising and advertorial label. There is nothing wrong with a Government communicating its message and communicating it effectively but it must do so in such a way that the public knows what it is. I checked the spreads many times and found no advertorial or advertising label on them. The content was passed off as reportage, which was the problem with it.

If we look at what was announced in it, we can see an announcement about the completion of the Portlaoise orbital route, which was announced by the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport months ago. All local Deputies, including the Deputy from Fine Gael, welcomed this. In addition, there was information about the new psychiatric unit and the new court house, both of which have been doing the rounds for many years at this point. There was no need to spend taxpayers' money telling people what was already announced. This was clearly an attempt by the Taoiseach and Fine Gael to promote themselves with taxpayers' money. This unit is on a dangerous path. It must be disbanded and we must stop spending taxpayers' money on the Taoiseach's vanity projects. We can see that the unit is the Taoiseach's vanity project. He set it up when he came into office. Members of Fine Gael need to look closely at this. It should be disbanded.

See this speech in context