Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)
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Question 296: To ask the Minister for Foreign Affairs the expenditure by his Department on consultants for each of the past six calendar years, including to date in 2008; the breakdown of these figures in order to show the amount and proportion of expenditure on consultants which relates to expenditure on public relations, marketing or advertising consultants; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [28386/08]

Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)
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The Department of Foreign Affairs is responsible for two Votes — Vote 28 (Foreign Affairs) and Vote 29 (International Cooperation). I have set out in tabular form below details of expenditure under sub-head A7 (Consultancy) and also the amount spent on public relations, marketing or advertising consultants, for the period in question. It should be noted that the figures relating to public relations, marketing or advertising consultants reflect costs incurred from sub-head A7 and also from various programme subheads within both Votes, where the expenditure incurred was specifically linked to a particular programme. For example, in 2007, €4,039 was paid to Rachel Dalton Communications from the Department's Communicating Europe Initiative to promote and publish the work of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on European Affairs and the Sub Committee on European Scrutiny.

I am very conscious of the need to achieve value for money on expenditure incurred in this area. My Department engages consultancy services only where specialised knowledge and/or skills are not available within the Department and, particularly in the case of Irish Aid (Ireland's official development assistance programme), where ongoing independent evaluation of programmes and projects is required. Given the overall scale of the Irish Aid Programme, I am satisfied that this level of monitoring, review and evaluation is both prudent and proportionate.