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

I propose to take Questions Nos. 1 to 5, inclusive, together.

In the past ten years, the Department of the Taoiseach has incurred expenditure of €3.7 million on advertising with RTÉ. The bulk of this expenditure relates to Government Information Service, GIS, campaigns in 2020 and 2021. All expenditure is placed through a media buying company procured through an Office of Government Procurement framework. The role of the contracted media buying company is to ensure value for money and the most appropriate media is used to reach the maximum target groups.

The current media buying company has confirmed it has never used barter accounts for any Government business.

As set out in the table, most of the advertising placed with RTÉ was in the period since 2020 for the dissemination of information related to Covid-19. Public information campaigns played a vital role in communicating the various strands of the pandemic, including the supports made available by Government.

	RTÉ Advertising Expenditure
2013	Nil
2014	Nil
2015	Nil
2016	Nil
2017	Nil
2018	€86,486
2019	Nil
2020	€2,185,958
2021	€1,376,870
2022	€85,160
2023	Nil

Advertising expenditure with RTÉ was nil for the years 2013 through 2017 and in 2019. In 2018, there was a spend of just over €86,000, while in 2020 it was just over €2.1 million. In 2021, it was €1.3 million. The spend fell to €85,000 last year and there has been no advertising spending with RTÉ this year.

The Department had no expenditure on departmental public relations in the past ten years, with the exception of public relations and communications services for the data summit held in June 2017 at a cost of €30,750. The citizens’ assemblies, which are staffed by the Department, have incurred expenditure of €275,293.40 since 2017 on public relations. Its remit includes raising public awareness of the assemblies' work and supporting communication and media outreach.

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