Micheál Martin
Question:1. Deputy Micheál Martin asked the Taoiseach the number of staff employed in the Government Information Service. [37670/18]
View answerTuesday, 23 October 2018
Questions (1, 2)
Brendan Howlin
Question:2. Deputy Brendan Howlin asked the Taoiseach the number of staff employed in the Government Information Service. [41074/18]
View answerOral answers (4 contributions)
I propose to take Questions Nos. 1 and 2 together.
Following the review conducted by the Secretary General earlier in the year, it was agreed that the Department should go with a reformed Government Information Service, GIS, model, with a smaller budget, fewer staff and a more limited remit.
Accordingly, the budget has been reduced by 50%. The staff numbers have been reduced by four.
In further alignment with the Secretary General's report, the reformed GIS team now incorporates the Government Press Office, giving a total of 17 on the newly combined team.
This includes MerrionStreet.ie.
The civil servants in the reformed GIS come under the management of the assistant secretary for corporate affairs, while respecting the role of the Government press secretary and the deputy and assistant Government press secretaries in day-to-day management of press and communications. The work of the GIS includes the work of the Government press office, the digital team or MerrionStreet.ie, central support services for other Departments, providing services to the media, managing media events, and producing communications material across all platforms.
The GIS is supporting the development of the single Government identity, the single web portal project, www.gov.ie, and capacity-building in communications across government. The GIS continues to have a co-ordinating and supporting role for national, cross-Government communications, as has always been the case, but such campaigns are being led and funded by the relevant line Department.
While the strategic communications unit may be gone, it is striking how its spirit continues through the obsession with a certain type of marketing presentation and branding. Instead of seeing modern communications, what we are seeing is very traditional old-style marketing. It may use new platforms but there is nothing modern about the focus on selling messages rather than engaging with citizens in a real way.
In recent days, the Taoiseach has begun appearing in paid online advertisements on Brexit. Could he tell us how many views he has bought for his video? With the dramatic extension of policy advertising and the central role played by the Taoiseach and his Ministers, most modern communications companies would undertake a review of its effectiveness. Can the Taoiseach state whether any studies have been commissioned on whether the politician-focused advertising on which the Government is spending millions of euro is effective? Have we become a more creative society? The Minister for Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, Deputy Madigan, and the Taoiseach have been appearing regularly in paid advertisements in supplements telling us that creativity is great. Creative Ireland is costing a lot of money and there have been many supplements and photographs. I am not clear, however, about their impact.
It is purported that the video produced for the UN Security Council campaign cost approximately €100,000, and that €370,000 was expended on it overall. One hundred thousand euro was spent on a five-minute video, which seemed to be more about the domestic audience than the international audience. We have won the campaign before. On previous occasions, we have had people elected to the Security Council but it did not involve this sort of elaborate razzmatazz and videos of the Taoiseach and others with backdrops, music and all the rest of it. That is all fine but people who know what Security Council elections are all about are aware it is about the hard grind of knocking on doors. It takes a long time to make contacts, which are built up over a number of years. Arrangements must be made with other countries and alliances have to be developed. Therefore, I question the need for a video production costing €100,000 for the campaign. I would appreciate it if the Taoiseach indicated to me its purpose and audience. The audience seems to be domestic rather than international. Could the Taoiseach indicate whether he has undertaken any analyses or studies of the effectiveness of all this?
I want to ask about the gov.ie portal project, which the GIS has been working with the Office of the Government Chief Information Officer to develop. The Taoiseach said previously that it is part of the eGovernment strategy for the period 2017 to 2020 to rationalise existing Government websites and online services over time. Will the gov.ie portal replace in time all the departmental websites, some of which are a bit outdated and many of which are not very user-friendly? Will the departmental websites be redesigned in line with the gov.ie interface?
It was envisaged as part of the eGovernment strategy that there would be, by last month, an online health portal added to the suite of services available through the MyGov.ie service. This has not happened. When will that portal be added? What exactly will the service provide? How will it direct people? How will people interact with it?
No studies or analyses have been commissioned that I am aware of but I will certainly give the Deputy's suggestion some consideration. It might be a useful exercise.
Creative Ireland and the UN Security Council campaigns are not run out of my Department or funded by it. With regard to the UN Security Council campaign more broadly, it obviously has different aspects. There is traditional lobbying at diplomatic and political levels. I used the Asia–Europe summit on Friday in Brussels as an opportunity to do that. I met bilaterally, in a formal context, the President of Mongolia and the Prime Minister of Norway. I also met the Foreign Minister of Kazakhstan and the Deputy Prime Minister of Malaysia. I obviously had many other interactions on Thursday evening and Friday with many government representatives and world leaders. I used the occasion as an opportunity to make our case and pitch for a seat on the UN Security Council. Should I have the opportunity to continue in office between now and the election in 2020, that will be a big part of the work I do as Taoiseach. Obviously it is happening all the time at diplomatic level. Ministers are incorporating this work into their regular bilateral meetings.
Beyond diplomatic and political lobbying, there is, of course, what we actually do as a country, including the stance we take in the United Nations and the position we take on important issues. As part of the budget last week, there was a very large increase in commitment to overseas development assistance. I often hear political parties in this Chamber demanding that we increase our contribution to overseas development aid by a certain amount. We exceeded any figure produced by any party in our commitment. That now allows us to start moving up the scale again in terms of the proportion of our national income that is committed to overseas development aid. We had been at about 0.5% at one stage but the figure fell to about 0.3%. We are now going to start increasing the proportion again, however. We have an ongoing commitment to peacekeeping. We are increasing our level of participation in the mission in Lebanon, as the Deputy knows, taking the place of the Finns and Estonians, who are not continuing any more. It is important to have a public-awareness aspect to the campaign informing the public about what the Government is doing and how its money is being spent, particularly when it relates to overseas development aid, peacekeeping and our work in the United Nations. In addition, the Global Ireland 2025 initiative, to which I am very committed, is expanding our diplomatic presence around the world. New embassies are being set up and we are expanding significantly the remit and operations of agencies such as IDA Ireland, Tourism Ireland, Bord Bia and InterTrade Ireland. The Deputies will have seen in the budget a real, substantial commitment to all of those things. This is a new approach to foreign policy that is bursting with substance, whether in respect of Global Ireland 2025 or our UN Security Council campaign.
With regard to gov.ie, I am not fully up to date on how the project is going. The plan is that gov.ie will become the portal for access to all Departments and services. To be honest, I am not quite sure how rapidly it is developing. I believe it is run out of the Office of Government Procurement. I am afraid I do not know the position on the health portal yet but I will certainly find out and advise the Deputy by correspondence.