Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Taoiseach for his reply. It is fair to say that, since he became Taoiseach, expenditure on video production and social media generally has risen dramatically. It is close to €500,000, as reported in thejournal.ieand as the Taoiseach has confirmed. The largest item of expenditure relates to Project Ireland 2040, on which approximately €146,000 was spent when it was launched earlier in the year. There was a lot of controversy over it in terms of a political context as a background to the entire launch. There was €21,000 spent on the campaign for Ireland to host the Rugby World Cup. That was interesting again. The videos are of high production quality. All the videos tend to cut to images of the Taoiseach. In the case of the Rugby World Cup, the head of the Irish Rugby Football Union is shown, which is fair enough. According to thejournal.ie, also shown are "Frances Fitzgerald and Shane Ross in slow motion alongside scenes of the landscape of Ireland, Croke Park, Lansdowne Road and iconic rugby moments in our history." There are clear implications here in some respects in terms of the political positioning and promotion of Ministers, with music in the background.

We accept that social media are well established as a communications platform for official information. Unfortunately, however, they are also a means of spreading disinformation, in addition to being a means by which Governments can engage in publicly funded propaganda. The abuse of public funding in social media during recent election and referendum campaigns in Hungary, for example, is especially striking. That is why we have to be vigilant here. In the past, quite strict rules were developed about political content in official broadcast and print advertising. Rules concerning transparency in costs and outlets were respected until last year when documents released under freedom of information legislation showed at least one Minister personally decided on advertising allocations to individual newspapers. One could see the Minister's intervention in deciding on which newspapers and how much they got. In another case an official personally reporting to the Taoiseach held direct discussions with newspapers, including on how much money they would receive.

The Taoiseach has said repeatedly he has no problem with millions being spent on advertising that features him and Ministers to an excessive degree but this is at least partly back under control with the closure of the personal marketing unit, the strategic communications unit, that he advocated. The key issue in regard to social media concerns what rules are in place to ensure promoted activity paid for by the taxpayer and the public adheres to reasonable guidelines. An enormous difference between this activity and traditional advertising is that much of the population will not be exposed to it, and even if social media are used the advertising is seen only by those in a targeted group.

Who decides what keywords are bought, what platforms are used, which groups are targeted and what the messages are? For example, our campaign for the UN Security Council is targeted at a limited number of people in governments in other countries. One would think that is what we are doing generally and what diplomats do, yet for some reason money was spent promoting it to people here with a very expensive video production. Never before in our successful Security Council campaigns — we have had some successes in this regard — was money spent on advertising in Ireland. The domestic audience is not really in a position to influence the campaign. Is there a process whereby a senior person reviews promoted messages? What are the guidelines to ensure this publicly funded platform does not become dominated by the promotion of the Taoiseach or other political figures? All of the videos and online material show politicians left, right and centre.

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