An extraordinary item appeared in The Sunday Times on Sunday as a result of an investigation by the information commissioner. It is a full page article. The gentleman in the accompanying photograph without the dark glasses is the Taoiseach and the other gentleman is the head of this monitoring unit. The finding of the information commissioner shows that this unit, under the guise of operating as part of the GIS, is transparently for political purposes. I should remind the House that section 2 of the Freedom of Information Act classes as exempt from production under that Act the papers created for or held by Government Ministers and Ministers of State relating to party political activity. This is a reasonable exemption since the documents in question do not relate to the performance of official ministerial functions or Government business. Freedom of information legislation covers the public sector not private activity.
This case, however, demonstrates the extent to which, under this Government, the distinction between official and party political activity has been blurred, if not entirely erased. Deputy Hogan and The Sunday Times applied under the Freedom of Information Act for access to correspondence between the manager of the Government's media monitoring unit and the Taoiseach. Both applicants were met with the extraordinary response, upheld on appeal by the information commissioner, that these records were exempt from production on the grounds that they relate to party political activity. The reality is that the media monitoring unit is a Fianna Fáil espionage unit funded by the taxpayer to monitor what its political opponents are saying about Fianna Fáil. It is Fianna Fáil's very own little GCHQ eavesdropping for political purposes on political opponents.
The unit is staffed by six full-time civil servants and headed by a former party press aide. The full year cost of the unit is £70,000, according to the Taoiseach, excluding the salaries of the six civil servants who are being used for party political purposes. While the unit masquerades as an integral part of the Government Information Service, supplying a service to members of the Government, its purpose, as revealed by the information commissioner, is transparently party political. The State pays for this as if it was a public service, such as the building of roads or the healing of the sick, yet according to the information commissioner, this is not a public service, it relates to the functions and activities of Ministers, not as Ministers but as members of a political party.
Depending on your sense of insecurity you could regard this eavesdropping as either sinister or entirely pointless. That the taxpayer should subvent this exercise, however, when we have been authoritatively told that it is carried out entirely for party political purposes, raises serious questions about the legitimacy of this as an item of public expenditure.
To give an example of the kind of thing revealed in the appeal to the information commissioner, the director of this press unit sent the Taoiseach a note with a clipping from the News of the World which says: “Taoiseach, our old friends in the News of the World like you, I think! I would suggest that you might drop them a note and thank them for their support.”. The News of the World is approving of a Fianna Fáil Taoiseach; Mr. de Valera would turn in his grave.
The next note concerns a report that the Minister, Deputy O'Rourke, spoke for five minutes and 30 seconds on "Morning Ireland" and was interrupted nine times by the interviewer, Áine Lawlor. Anyone who interrupts the Minister, Deputy O'Rourke, nine times in the course of five and a half minutes is a brave person. It seems we are getting to the stage that if David Hanley laughs during an interview, which he may do given the bags which was made of the Luas system by the Minister, it will be in a note from Mr. Marty Whelan to the Taoiseach. The report also stated that Deputy Emmet Stagg got five minutes and 45 seconds, largely uninterrupted.
The notion that the taxpayer should have to pay for this party political unit is ridiculous. The rainbow coalition employed people for the express reason that our party political ethos and approach to policy questions were different. This is not about policy, it is about eavesdropping on what the media and telecommunications have to say about any given Minister. The notion that Marty Whelan is sitting in some secluded part of Government Buildings with a slide rule measuring the number of column inches the fashion correspondent in the Sunday World writes about the Taoiseach—