Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú) | Oireachtas source

Under the previous Government, the decision was made that all online advertising would go through the Taoiseach's office. Is that still the case? What controls are in place to monitor Government spending? Perhaps the Taoiseach will furnish us with a report on and breakdown of Government spending on this. There is no doubt that there need to be controls. A sum of €2 million is large and I am concerned there might be another agenda at play. We are all familiar with the CervicalCheck scandal, which was a shocking situation that happened in this country, and with the amount of coverage it received internationally. Strangely, if one Googles the words "cervical check Ireland" one will note the first page of results omits any mention of the scandal whatsoever in any news reports. The first page is all Government advertisements. Now perhaps that indicates a very ambitious Government looking to advertise the services available but it is strange there are just enough ads on that page to push all news items to the next page. Again I figured that there was probably nothing wrong here, but it is worth considering that these ads were still being run during the pandemic when there was a Government decision that those screening services would stop. We had a full page of search-optimised adverts running right through the pandemic when women could not access those services at all. Why did the Government continue to spend money on advertising when those services were not available?

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