Vol. 395 No. 3
2 Mr. Spring asked the Taoiseach if he will ensure that a person (details supplied) employed by him on a full-time contract for the duration of the Irish Presidency ceases for the duration of that contract to write a weekly column in a number of newspapers; and if he will make a statement on the matter.
The person referred to employed by my Department is appointed on the standard contract that he may not engage in private practice or be involved with any outside business which would interfere with the performance of his services as Press Officer. Neither he nor any other such person, therefore, is debarred from private work provided it is done in his own time and does not interfere with his services as Press Officer.
May I express some surprise at the response given by the Taoiseach to my question? When I asked a supplementary to a question asked by Deputy Dukes last week the Taoiseach informed me that this contract was exclusive and that the person employed is employed exclusively by the Government. However, the Taoiseach is now telling us that this person can do other work. It is my understanding that the sum of money provided in the Estimates for this new office, including the person I am asking about, is in the region of £500,000. Can the Taoiseach tell us what amount of money this person is getting for the six months?
The Deputy is wrong. The cost of employing the additional press officers is, I think, about £175,000, but I will check that for the Deputy. I will also check what exactly the individual referred to is getting. However the Deputy should know from his own knowledge that, traditionally, persons employed in the public service, provided their other activities do not interfere with their public duties, have been entitled to engage in those other activities. Some of the best literature in this country has been produced by civil servants, as the Deputy well knows.
Some of the worst as well.
There is absolutely no danger that the journalist in question is ever going to produce some of the best literature in this country.
I do not expect Fianna Fáil to agree with that comment.
Ceisteanna.
If the Taoiseach can make the odd glib comment I should be entitled to do likewise. I ask the Taoiseach again to tell us exactly how much money the person in question is getting for his six months part time employment. Second, is there not a danger of this person being paid twice as I assume there will be little difference between the memoranda that will be submitted to the Taoiseach and what we read on a regular basis in The Kerryman for whom this man is a columnist. I assume he is being paid by Independent Newspapers for his fortnightly contributions. Is there not a danger that he will be paid by the State for the same contributions?
I do not understand that, but I will give the Deputy exact information about what the person in question is getting from the State for this assignment——
I am asking for that.
——and also the total for the three people involved in the new press arrangment.
Can we have it now?
I have not got it now, but from recollection I think the total cost of these new press arrangements is £170,000 for the six months.
It is incumbent on the Taoiseach to inform us of the exact amount of money being paid to somebody whose services are considered to be invaluable by the Taoiseach for the six months. It is, therefore, in the public interest that we should know exactly what this person is being paid for providing a part time service to the State.
There is a fundamental misconception in what the Deputy is saying. This skilled journalist is not being employed in my interest. He is being employed in order to service a media corp of 1,500 persons for the duration of our Presidency. We are providing to the best of our ability a skeleton service in an endeavour to meet all the enormous demands of the world press arising out of our Presidency.
A Cheann Comhairle——
Deputy Bruton was offering.
Would the Taoiseach agree that the Council of Ministers has its own press service which serves every Presidency and is extremely competent? Therefore would he tell me why the Irish Presidency needs to have a special press officer seconded in Brussels and another one, the man to whom we are referring, in Strasbourg, in view of the fact that there is constant traffic between those two cities? In other words, why do we need two separate press officers on the Irish Government's payroll in view of the fact that the Council of Ministers already has more than adequate media facilities?
It has nothing to do with the services provided by the Council of Ministers. Every Presidency provides, of necessity, additional facilities to cope with the requirements of the world press during the tenure of the Presidency. I have already explained to the House that when I was in Paris for the special Summit meeting called by President Mitterrand just before Christmas, I got some idea of the enormous demands made on the Presidency for the time being by the world press. As I said already, there were 1,500 journalists there. I know that the French Presidency, even though they normally would have enormous media resources at their disposal, extended those facilities during the course of their Presidency. So far as I know, every EC country by force of circumstances, has to provide additional press facilities during the course of its Presidency. I cannot understand what objection there can be, for a limited period of six months, to providing in two key centres, Strasbourg and Brussels, additional press facilities to enable us to respond in as satisfactory a way as possible to the innumerable requests which arise during the course of the Presidency.
Order. We have dwelt overlong on this question. It must come to finality. I will allow a further brief supplementary from Deputy Spring.
Since you insist in reaching finality I shall repeat one part of my question. Will the Taoiseach inform this House, as I believe we are entitled to be informed, of the exact payment to be made to the journalist in question?
The Deputy has put that question repeatedly.
The necessity for repetition is because the Taoiseach will not answer it specifically.
I will give the information later——
Secondly, would the Taoiseach not have considered it better to have looked for somebody in the 213,000 or 214,000 people unemployed to give a job to with the amount of money rather than to a part-time journalist?
I have come to expect the kind of cronyism involved in this from the Taoiseach. Is it true that the Council of Ministers never meets in Strasbourg? The Parliament meets there one week in four and all activities in relation to the Irish Presidency take place in Brussels or the host country.
We are really reaching a low level of nit-picking.
The Taoiseach was the first person to use the word "cronyism" in this House.
Let us hear the reply.
The Deputy must not try to take out his political frustrations on me. There are other directions in which he should send them.
It is cronyism of the worst type.
A very important part of our policy in conducting the affairs of the Presidency is to maintain the best possible relationship with the European Parliament. We have learned from our observation of previous Presidencies that the goodwill, support and co-operation of the European Parliament is essential for the success of any Presidency.
One week in four.
Already a number of our Ministers have been out to brief Parliament, attended its committees and outline for it how we propose to conduct the affairs of the Presidency. The addition of one extra journalist in Strasbourg to facilitate that process, to help disseminate information about the Presidency to the European press in Strasbourg is, I think, an eminently sensible step. This criticism of our very modest attempts——
One week in four the Parliament meets there and the Council of Ministers never meets there.
——to help service the world press during the course of our Presidency is the lowest form of nit-picking I have come across for a long time.
It is expensive nit-picking.
Question No. 3.
