Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party)
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1. To ask the Taoiseach the details of the new structure of the communications unit within his Department following the completion of the review. [18891/18]

Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour)
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2. To ask the Taoiseach when market research on a citizen survey will commence; and when Opposition parties will be briefed in this regard. [18941/18]

Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein)
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3. To ask the Taoiseach if he will report on the proposed new structure of the communications and publicity section of his Department following the recently conducted review of the strategic communications unit. [19724/18]

Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 1 to 3, inclusive, together.

Following on from the review of the operation of the strategic communications unit, or SCU, my Department will revert to a reformed Government information service, or GIS, model. The GIS will have a smaller budget, fewer staff and a more limited role than the SCU. There will be a managed reversion to the more traditional GIS model with a transition period until July 2018. This transition is now under way and will conclude on schedule. The reassignment of staff is being dealt with as a confidential HR matter by the management of the Department in consultation with each individual staff member. As outlined in the review, surplus staff will be given the opportunity to be reassigned to another post either within my Department or in another Department or agency. In some cases, the duties of staff will not change as they either predate the establishment of the SCU or such work will continue in a reformed GIS.

Civil servants in the Government information service and the Government press office will come under the management of the assistant secretary general with responsibility for corporate affairs while respecting the role of the Government press secretary and the deputy and assistant Government press secretaries in the day-to-day management of press and communications. The 2018 funding allocation for the unit has been reduced by €2.5 million. This will result in my Department's 2018 Estimate being 9% less than its 2017 Estimate.

While the Government information service will lead and conduct the citizen research as planned, this will only commence once the Opposition parties have been afforded an opportunity to review the proposed survey. This review will be done in the coming weeks. Once the survey has been run, the results will be published expeditiously.

Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour)
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The Taoiseach indicated to the House on 4 April that he would continue with the citizen survey but only after the Opposition parties had the opportunity to be briefed and give their views on it. Is that to happen in the next couple of weeks? Is the survey going ahead and will we be contacted in that timeframe? What has been the delay in coming back to us since 4 April?

For clarification, does the title "strategic communications unit" exist anymore or has it been abolished? Is there a strategic communications unit currently? On the €5 million, the Taoiseach says half the sum will simply be rebated to the Exchequer and not reallocated within his Department. Is that right? What is the employment framework number for whatever the strategic communications unit is currently called?

Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein)
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Ba mhaith liom buíochas a ghabháil leis an Taoiseach as an gceist seo a fhreagairt. When does the Taoiseach plan to consult with the Opposition on the public opinion survey? What form will that consultation take? It was one of the recommendations in the recent report of the Secretary General of the Taoiseach's Department, Mr. Martin Fraser. Another of his recommendations stated that issues raised in the review might usefully be considered by the Oireachtas. What form will that take? Is the proposal, for example, to clear some time and allow for a Dáil debate or consideration? As to accountability, the report outlines problems and issues but does not address conclusively the issue of who was responsible for the debacle surrounding the strategic communications unit.

It states that the Government took the decision on 6 September last year to establish the SCU. Can the Taoiseach put a little more flesh on those bones? Does the Taoiseach accept political responsibility for what was a flawed and failed venture?

Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)
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The primary reason this issue continues to be raised is that the Taoiseach has continued his policy of refusing to respond to on-topic questions and to deny the reality of serious lapses in what happened with this unit. I have now asked the Taoiseach four times to respond to direct questions about information released by the Secretary General and each time he has ignored the question and launched a political attack. I will ask it once again. Does the Taoiseach acknowledge that the report on best practice prepared by the unit stated that the work of the unit should be directed by public input, not political decisions? Given this, can the Taoiseach explain why €2.5 million in irreversible contracts were issued before any public input had been sought? Why was the work plan discussed at Cabinet if the best practice identified by the unit said this should not happen?

Furthermore, the Secretary General's report reveals that a significant majority of the €174 million State spending on communications is incurred by a handful of State agencies, mainly in agriculture and transport, which the Taoiseach stated would not be co-ordinated by the unit. It is a simple matter of logic that the claim about massive savings from the €174 million could not have been true. Can the Taoiseach explain why this claim was made repeatedly by him and his colleagues, even when he had the information to hand that it was not true? Finally, with regard to the research, is there a date by which the promise to consult will be carried out or will this continue to be delayed? The Taoiseach informed us previously that it would be available in February.

Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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I will deal with the citizen survey first. The plan is to consult with the Opposition parties on the questions. I imagine it will be much more straightforward than people expect. It will be questions about public satisfaction with different Government bodies, for example, and public knowledge and awareness of Government policies and the different programmes run by the Government, to see if there are information deficits in that regard. I have not been consulted on it so I have not seen a list of questions yet. As Deputies will appreciate, I have many things on my plate and many other priorities at present, and going through a list of questions for a citizen survey has not been one of them in the past couple of weeks given everything else that is happening. However, once I have been consulted, it is intended to consult the Opposition parties.

The SCU title still exists and will exist until July. We are in the transition period at present and the title is still being used. It is intended that the €2.5 million will be remitted back to the Exchequer, but obviously there is the possibility that there may be overruns in my Department and they would have first call on it. For example, a number of commissions of investigation are run through my Department and there is a possibility that the money might have to be veered from that budget line to commissions of investigation. As things stand, however, we expect it will be remitted to the Exchequer. That means my Department's budget will have fallen significantly this year. As I mentioned previously, I have fewer advisers than the last two or three taoisigh and spend less in terms of the Department's overall spend. Obviously, spending in other areas is increasing but not in the Department of the Taoiseach.

With regard to policy decisions, I take responsibility for all policy decisions I make. Administrative decisions or decisions made by third parties may be different, but I take absolute responsibility for any policy decisions.

Regarding public input and how public input can guide the work of the communications section of the Department, the intention of the citizen survey is not only to do the things I mentioned already but also to identify where there are information gaps where people are not aware of services the Government provides for them or of Government policies and plans for reform. However, it is not always necessary to survey citizens in advance. With Project Ireland 2040, for example, it would have been a waste of money to have carried out a survey before it had been published asking people if they knew about it. Of course, they would not know about it. How could one know about something that has not yet been published? There will be information campaigns, therefore, where we wish to inform people about what is happening, and it is not necessary to survey them to find out that they do not know about something that has not been published. Obviously, they would not know it. That is where information campaigns could be Government directed.

Another obvious area is pension reform. We have produced a detailed action plan for pension reform. It maps out how we are going to reform the pension system in a number of ways over the coming years. The centre piece of that is auto enrolment, moving towards a system whereby everybody is enrolled in a pension scheme. That is very important, particularly for people who work in the private sector. Two thirds of them have no pension provision other than the State pension. That is an area where we will have to inform people about what is happening and what is coming down the tracks in terms of pension reform. It might well make sense at the outset, as part of the citizen survey, to assess to what extent people know about the Government's plans for pension reform, whether they have heard of auto enrolment and so forth. I would wager that few people have heard of it. I do not know whether it is necessary to do that as part of the survey, but it is something that could be considered.