asked the Taoiseach the identity of the Director of the Government Information Services.
3.
Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - Government Information Services Director.
2.
asked the Taoiseach the salary attaching to the position of Director of the Government Information Services.
4.
asked the Taoiseach the functions of the Director of the Government Information Services.
With the permission of the Ceann Comhairle, I propose to take Questions Nos. 2, 3 and 4 together.
The Government Press Secretary, who is an Assistant Secretary in my Department, has responsibility for the Government Information Services. The post of Director of the Government Information Services, at principal level, has been vacant since March 1973.
I should like to ask the Taoiseach why he did not answer Question No. 4, to state the functions of the director of the Government Information Services, filled or unfilled?
The functions of the director are those which are now undertaken and executed by the Government Press Secretary.
Will the Taoiseach now withdraw the statement he made that the job of the director of the Government Information Services is to ensure balance and impartiality on RTE?
When I made that statement I did not have the titles in mind; I had the personage in mind. If I was not particularly accurate about the title I meant the person who now occupies the position of Press Secretary. It was a question of mistake in title and I do not think it has any special significance. The Deputy will remember that that statement was in response to a number of supplementary questions.
I should like to ask the Taoiseach, if he is now standing over that statement in relation to the Government Press Secretary, to reconcile it with the statement made by the Minister of State at the Department of Education, that control or rigid supervision of the media by public authorities is no guarantee that questions of public interest will be presented in an objective and balanced way and, indeed, its effect is often quite the contrary?
It is out of order to make quotations at Question Time, and if quotations are being offered I would like to have a copy of them. I cannot follow the nuances of that quotation across the floor.
Quotations are not permitted at Question Time. I was not aware that the Deputy was quoting.
The quotation is self-evident and its meaning is self-explanatory, I would argue. Is the Taoiseach aware of this contradiction between what he stated in the Dáil on 18 November and what his Minister of State at the Department of Education was preaching to a foreign audience at UNESCO on the same day?
The Deputy is widening the scope of the question and introducing argument.
I am not familiar with the statement the Deputy referred to and I am not prepared to discuss it.
Is the Taoiseach aware of widespread concern among the Institute of Professional Civil Servants about the failure of the Government to fill the post of director of the Government Information Services, if he has received any representations on this account and whether he proposes to do anything about the matter in order to create a career structure and prevent the abuse of the Government Information Services by Ministers?
I received such representations and replied to them. I should like to inform the Deputy in case he has not heard—I am sure he has not by reason of the manner in which he has been pursuing his supplementaries—that a work survey of the Government Information Services was carried out by the last Government in 1976 and the suppression of the post was recommended because a Press Secretary had been appointed by that Government and because the functions of both coincided.
Have the Government taken any decision on the suppression of that post?
That is under consideration by the Government, but I should like to inform the Deputy that the Government which he supported initiated that study.
The present situation lays the whole Government Information Services structure open to abuse by Ministers who want to issue scripts of a party political kind.
That is a statement.
In my opinion the appointment of a director would be superfluous.
I am sure the Institute of Professional Civil Servants will be interested in hearing that.
I told them that. If I was permitted to quote at Question Time I could tell the Deputy exactly what I wrote to them.
God help RTE also.