Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

In respect of the questions about the communications function in my Department, I am not personally involved in any decisions on advertising, staffing or the awarding of private contracts to anyone for communications purposes. These are matters for the Secretary General. I hear what Deputy Carthy said about communications staff across Departments and I appreciate he has not had any Executive experience of serving in government. For those staff, who are almost all civil servants, they and their unions might be a little offended at the Deputy's suggestion that their job is to handle communications on behalf of politicians or Ministers. That is not the case. Ministers have one press adviser and that person is a special adviser. All the other communications staff working in a Department are civil servants and they do not promote or work on behalf of the Minister. They are there to communicate with the public and the Oireachtas. A lot of their time may be spent on communicating with the Deputy and his party - he might not realise that - and they respond to comments and questions from the media as well.

As for some of the costs, the breakdown of the staff is as follows, and these are the grades at which they are paid: principal officer, one; assistant principal officer, 3.6 whole-time equivalents; administrative officer or higher executive officer, nine; executive officer, four; and clerical officer, one.

On the question regarding Covid-19 communications, €2 million has been allocated for any expenditure that might be needed for Covid-19 public communications this year, although we do not anticipate it is going to be spent. In terms of online advertising, the costs incurred by the Department have fallen in recent years. The figure was €1.45 million in 2020 and, largely as a consequence of Covid, that fell to €1.1 million in 2021 and to €256,000 only last year, so the spend on Covid-related communications has been falling as the restrictions eased and as Covid has become an endemic virus.

On the question of national security briefings for Opposition leaders, I will certainly give that some thought. Different countries do things in different ways. I do not get a regular, quarterly or monthly national security briefing. It tends to happen on a relatively ad hocbasis, as needed. Maybe that should change and perhaps we should give consideration to providing Opposition leaders with national security briefings as well. There is not a tradition of doing that in Ireland. I know it is done in other countries but we would need appropriate safeguards around that and absolute confidence about it. All Opposition leaders are not the same in that regard, if I can put it that way.

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