Frances Fitzgerald (Dublin Mid West, Fine Gael)
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Communications is an essential part of effectiveness of any modern organisation. That is particularly true of Government Departments and public service bodies in all countries, given the impact of their activities on the lives of their citizens.

Communication to the public is an essential service: people should know what their government is doing on their behalf, and why. That is why communications should be treated as a strategic, whole-of-government activity which should be conducted with the same level of professionalism as any other core service, such as human resource management or financial management.

As you will be aware, the Cabinet recently agreed that a new Strategic Communications Unit is to be established in the Department of the Taoiseach. Based on international best practice, and with the citizen at the centre of its work, the focus of this Unit will be to simplify Government communications and to increase efficiencies across the public sector when dealing with the Irish public.

The Unit aims to help achieve that in three ways: by streamlining communications for citizens; by developing and delivering major cross-Government communication campaigns; and improving communications capacity across Government.

As these work streams have a whole-of-government approach, the strategic communications unit will be consulting, and working closely, with all Departments, including my Department of Business Enterprise and Innovation, in the delivery of these aims.

The unit is currently staffed by serving public and civil servants, who have either been assigned on secondment or have been reallocated to the unit from within the Department of the Taoiseach and a State Agency.

It is likely that further vacancies will be filled through advertisement for staff on secondment from within the Public Service, as appropriate.