Last week, the Taoiseach was in full denial in regard to the activities of the strategic communications unit and the party-political nature of the advertisements related to the national development plan. I subsequently wrote to the Secretary General of the Taoiseach's Department outlining my concerns and complaints, and particularly what I believe to be a breach of the Civil Service code and the blurring of lines between the independence of the Civil Service and the promotion of a political party. Subsequently, at the end of the week, the Taoiseach indicated he had also contacted the Secretary General in respect of a review. However, the revelations in The Sunday Business Post concerning the origins and intentions of the strategic communications unit have revealed far more detail than anybody knew about and than the Dáil itself knew about. It is interesting that the Taoiseach's Department resisted every attempt to release this information. It was released only on the instructions of the Information Commissioner. What did the Taoiseach have to hide? Why did he resist the release of this information? Is it because it revealed too much and gave the lie to the idea advanced by him on many occasions that the unit was at arm's length from him and the Government? We now know from the emails that it was anything but and that three weeks after Deputy Varadkar was elected as Taoiseach, he had a meeting with the Secretary General, the now assistant secretary, Mr. Concannon, and his adviser, Mr. Brian Murphy, concerning the establishment of the strategic communications unit. It was his idea and he appointed a head. An audit began immediately of all Government expenditure and a memo was sent out by the assistant secretary, Mr. Concannon. The emails and issues discussed were quite revealing in terms of the level of activity that was ongoing.

What no one realised from the beginning was the idea that the Government or Taoiseach's office would seek to centralise and control up to €180 million in communications expenditure across agencies and Departments, channelling it all through the Taoiseach's office. That represents enormous purchasing power and enormous leverage for the Taoiseach's office with the media industry. It also represents the politicisation of established agencies, such as Bord Bia, IDA Ireland and the Revenue Commissioners, which are separate for a reason.

Has the Deputy a question?

My question for the Taoiseach is whether, given his recent comments, he now accepts that the strategic communications unit should be stood down and abolished. Will he ensure that the independence of the Civil Service is ring-fenced from party-political promotion given what has happened over recent weeks? Will he agree to release all information pertaining to the establishment of the strategic communications unit and its relationships with third parties and the media industry itself?

I thank the Deputy.

Will the Taoiseach ensure that the work of Behaviour & Attitudes in the context of research and insight be published forthwith?

We have just gone through the worst snowstorm in 35 years and, perhaps, 70 years. As I speak, there are still 23,000 households without water.

That is the fault of Irish Water.

Some parts of the country remain inaccessible by road and we have 20 Irish Water crews around the country trying to reconnect people to the water supply. The Leader of the Opposition's priority is the strategic communications unit.

It is disgraceful.

Does it not say a lot about the misplaced priorities of both the Leader of the Opposition and the main Opposition party that when people all over the country-----

Order, please.

-----are working hard in their jobs or as volunteers to deal with the national crisis, this is the only thing in which they are interested?

Answer the question.

Answer the question.

If I am not shouted down for a change, I will answer the questions. I will answer as many as I can in the time available.

It shows their priorities.

It does show their priorities. It really shows why it is a good thing that the party that I lead and the Government that I lead, with the Independent Alliance and other Independents, is in office and not a party that is obsessed with spin and other people's communications.

The Taoiseach is a Taoiseach, not a plumber. He should answer the question.

If I am not shouted down, I would like to answer some of the questions.

Deputies, please.

If I am not shouted down, I would like to answer some of the questions.

Get on with it. There is a minute and a half left.

It is interesting that people who demand answers to questions will never allow one to answer them.

Deputies, please.

The decision to establish a strategic communications unit in the Department of the Taoiseach to modernise, professionalise and streamline Government communications was made by the Global Irish Forum in 2011. The decision to do so was first announced to the Dáil in February 2013 by the former Deputy and then Tánaiste, Eamon Gilmore. It was not followed through on at that point. However, I took it as part of my job when I became Taoiseach to follow through on that. It remains a good idea. In my view, Government communications are fragmented, siloed and expensive. It has been pointed out that €180 million was spent by Government Departments, agencies and semi-States on communications annually. There are 700 press officers and information officers across the public service, many of whom are not trained to do the job they are asked to do. They go from processing employment permits one week to being press officer the next to doing a policy job a couple of months later.

A bit like the Taoiseach.

As a result, there are hundreds of external consultancies and these are very expensive. There are too many websites, logos and little empires. Ireland is an outlier when compared to other European countries in this regard. The idea was to streamline things; that is all. It was not to centralise everything in the Department of the Taoiseach. There was no proposal that specialist promotional agencies such as Tourism Ireland, IDA Ireland or Bord Bia should be controlled by the Department of the Taoiseach. That is absurd and a political charge. That was never intended, nor was it ever intended that it would apply to semi-State bodies, which are State-owned enterprises.

I thank the Taoiseach.

Rather, the intention was to collapse dozens of websites into one, namely, gov.ie, to train up a dedicated press corps across the public service, to develop a single identity for the Government, which is the Government of Ireland, to run cross-Government information campaigns - such as Healthy Ireland, the campaign relating to the self-employed and others - and to empower the Government to communicate directly with the public.

The Taoiseach's time is up, please.

I appreciate that the unit that I set up to better explain how Government works and what it does has now become a distraction from the work of the Government. I appreciate that mistakes were made, that controls were too loose and as a result, problems arose. For that reason, the unit is under review. The Secretary General is undertaking that review and will conclude before Easter.

Deputy Micheál Martin has one minute.

There is nothing as grave or as fundamental as the independence of our Civil Service. That is something that will outlive any particular storm at any particular time. I will decide what I raise and when I raise it. I have plenty of opportunities to do so. There is nothing more fundamental in a parliamentary democracy. This is a parliamentary democracy system of Government, not a presidential system of Government.

I do not accept the rationale behind the audit of the strategic communications unit. Bord Bia has been the most successful food promotion board that we have had. IDA Ireland has been very successful. They have discrete, important communications agendas. The vast bulk of the €180 million in spending is with the agencies. However, let us look at the Departments. It took a long time to establish the Department of Children and Youth Affairs, particularly in terms of acceptance of the idea that a Department should have responsibility for children. The Taoiseach's first initiative was to grab the good news regarding the child care subsidy; that it must come through his Department. That is what happened.

The Deputy's time is up. Has he a question?

I wish to put a key point to the Taoiseach. There was a party-political dimension to the promotion of the plan. The strategic communications unit was about political promotion and not the provision of hard information.

The Deputy's time is up.

Four marginal constituencies - Limerick City, Limerick West, Roscommon and Longford-Westmeath - all just happen to have Fine Gael candidates emblazoned across advertisements that have been paid for by the taxpayers' money. The utilising of taxpayers' money for a political spin machine-----

Time is up.

-----orchestrated by your good self from beginning to end of the enterprise: that is what is over the top.

In our political system every constituency is a marginal constituency. The last seat, if not the last two seats, in every constituency are marginal. The Deputy has his conspiracy theories about that. I have my conspiracy theory about the fact that two of the four controversial advertisements appeared in particular papers. The Deputy has a lot-----

Under Standing Orders that remark should be withdrawn.

There is no seat though.

That is slurring of a citizen of the State.

The Deputy has had a lot to say. I think I should be given extra time, in general, because I am constantly being shouted down.

Please, Deputies.

The Taoiseach is slurring an individual who is a citizen of the State.

Let us talk about slurs. I want to talk about slurs actually.

I would have just named the papers.

There have been a lot of slurs bandied around. A lot of what the Leader of the Opposition has said has been personalised, it has been vituperative and it has even been venomous towards me and my staff and towards some people in the Civil Service. I regret this is the tone that he has adopted, but he has. Deputy Martin has made a lot of allegations, based largely on innuendo and conspiracy theories. The Deputy has presented scant evidence to back these theories up. He has alleged that I and members of my staff pressurised newspaper editors. What is Deputy Martin's evidence of that? All I see are anonymous claims from a third party, an agency that did not even have a contract with the Government-----

Did the Taoiseach apologise to Ellen Coyne?

The Taoiseach's time is up, please.

How can the Deputy stand over such allegations?

Did the Taoiseach apologise to Ellen Coyne?

The Deputy has nothing on which to base these allegations. He has made a lot out of an email that has appeared in the newspapers with an instruction that content should be laid out as normal editorial. This email is from August 2017, which predates the establishment of the strategic communications unit and it relates to Creative Ireland, an arts and culture promotional campaign.

I did not mention that at all.

If this is so, why has the Leader of the Opposition consistently misrepresented that again and again, as though it came from the strategic communications unit-----

Maybe the Taoiseach wants to break up the Government.

I thank the Taoiseach.

-----and as though it related to Project Ireland 2040? I will sit down but I need to say one last sentence.

The Taoiseach does not need to say it.

The principal charge made against me by the Leader of the Opposition is that I have somehow blurred the lines between the Civil Service and politics.

Because he has.

Let us listen to what Deputy Martin said about freedom of information yesterday on "The Last Word".

Maybe it suits the Taoiseach to break up the Government.

The Taoiseach is way over time.

He said they were refused first. He said that it was interesting that the Taoiseach had concealed a lot of information and it was interesting that there was opposition to revealing information that was contained in a freedom of information request that The Sunday Business Post received. They were first refused and then they went to the information commissioner for the reasons why the Government refused to release it. The Deputy asked why did the Government hide and why would the Government refuse to release this material.

The Deputy opposite has been a Member of this House for longer than most people have been alive. He knows how the Freedom of Information Act works. There is a deciding officer and a civil servant decides what is released and what is not. They are not allowed to ask a politician about it. A politician is not allowed to direct them on what they should or should not release. One minute Deputy Martin accuses me of politicising the Civil Service and in the next minute he makes a bogus, false assertion and says that I should. He should withdraw that. The Deputy should apologise and withdraw that.

There is nothing-----

When it suits the Taoiseach to break up the Government-----

The Taoiseach has hidden the truth and slurred a journalist.

Deputies, please. Whatever about strategic communications I do not know what the public looking in here thinks that this House is communicating to them. If the leaders in this House are incapable of adhering to the rules of the House then the Members must change the rules if they do not like them. As they are the rules, please do not continue to show the disrespect we have seen here today.

I believe that the Taoiseach doth protest too much on this matter. I am not entirely clear what is his assertion of his own personal conspiracy theory. I am not entirely impressed with the Taoiseach's political priorities. In budget 2018 the strategic communications unit was allocated €5 million. I will put this in context. This is one third of the additional money that was promised for mental health - so much for the Taoiseach's political priorities. This communications unit is now mired in scandal. The Taoiseach can rant and rave, he can point the finger and he can talk about conspiracy theories but that is now where it is at.

He said in October that there would be no political advertising or promotion of political parties and that the Civil Service and public sector code would continue to apply in respect of this unit, and this has clearly not been the case. That was a piece of spin in and of itself. The Taoiseach's spin unit has followed a strategy to promote Fine Gael in newspapers in a very underhand and unprincipled way by directing editors to present paid-for political advertising as regular news articles. He referred to the email courtesy of Ellen Coyne, who is not on these benches but on the media bench above. The email stated: "Part of our deal is that we don't have any moniker such as "Advertorial" or "special feature" or anything like that - it simply runs as normal editorial." The Taoiseach is right - this referred to the Creative Ireland campaign. However, the Taoiseach also knows that this was very explicitly the template to be used for all other adverts and that this strategy was explicitly articulated. In this email, the words I have just put on the record were followed by the words, "I do hope your editorial team understands this". I am very sure editorial teams fully understood it. This strategy is underhand and clearly designed for party-political promotion. It was carried out using not just public money, but the resources of the Civil Service. As the Taoiseach knows, the Civil Service is prohibited from being used to advance the party-political objectives of whomsoever is in government. This unit was not about informing citizens-----

A question, Deputy, please.

-----but about promoting the Taoiseach's party. It was not about news, but about propaganda. It was not done to benefit the people, but to benefit Fine Gael. The Taoiseach now says he has ordered a review of the unit-----

The Deputy's time is up.

-----and has asked Martin Fraser, a person for whom I have the utmost regard, to carry out that review. However, the Taoiseach can hardly ask any of us to treat this as a credible proposition because, while I mean no disrespect to Mr. Fraser, was he not the person responsible for the oversight of the Taoiseach's spin unit in the first place-----

The Deputy's time is up.

-----and central to its establishment? In no way could he be considered an independent assessor. It is, therefore, now time-----

The Deputy is bang out of order.

The Deputy's time is up.

-----for the Taoiseach to wind down his strategic communications unit and I would go further-----

Will the Deputy wind down as well?

Yes. The rules must be applied or misapplied in an even-handed manner, I am sure the Ceann Comhairle will agree.

Yes, and at this point Deputy Martin was 42 seconds over time, whereas Deputy McDonald is 50 seconds over time.

If the Ceann Comhairle does not mind, I will further put it to the Taoiseach that not alone should this unit be stood down, but he and any other relevant officials should go before the Committee of Public Accounts to give a full account-----

Please, Deputy.

-----of what was spent and how. These were, after all, public moneys and not Fine Gael moneys.

One minute and 19 seconds.

To state some facts, the budget for mental health this year is approximately €900 million. It has increased by €150 million or €200 million in recent years. One can argue about how much the increase was but it was certainly a lot more than €5 million. It was probably closer to €35 million.

It was €15 million.

Therefore, I am not sure whether Deputy McDonald's assertions count as fake news or spin but they are certainly untrue. The €5 million budget came out of my Department's administrative allocation. My Department is one of the few Departments that had their budgets reduced for 2018, and I imagine that €5 million budget will be reduced further, if not eliminated altogether, depending on how the review goes.

The Deputy asserted that I or someone in my office directed editors to present advertorials as news. She should present evidence to back this up. The only evidence I have seen is that a company did that, a company that was a subcontractor-----

Which the Taoiseach's Department paid.

-----to the company with which the SCU had a contract.

The Taoiseach is responsible.

It is, therefore, the subcontractor, it is alleged, that did this, yet the assertion that Deputy McDonald is trying to make, the slur, the spin, the twist-----

The Taoiseach is accountable for the money spent by his Department.

Let the Taoiseach answer.

-----that she is trying to put across is that someone in my office or the communications unit, or perhaps me personally, did this. If she has any evidence for this, let her present it.

He does not even know his job.

Before somebody answers a charge one is actually supposed to present some evidence to back up the charge and then the person can respond to it.

Taking photographs. That is all he knows.

If the Deputy has any evidence ti that effect I ask her to present it. She quoted some correspondence between Media Force and an unknown media organisation. What she did not say was that was an email that predated the establishment of the SCU. She implies it came from the SCU.

More of this to come.

What she did not say is it related to Creative Ireland, which was an arts campaign - and a relatively uncontroversial arts campaign - that had no connection with Project Ireland 2040. If that is not spin and innuendo what is spin and innuendo? To present something that predated the SCU that was about a different campaign as somehow being the same as Project Ireland 2040 and as somehow being from the SCU-----

It was testing the water.

-----and to make allegations about a fourth party, a subcontractor, and somehow imply that what was done by a subcontractor must have been done by officials in my Department is pure spin. That is pure conjecture. It is also a slur, in my opinion.

I was very clear in my use of figures. I said it was a third of the additional moneys allocated for mental health.

Wrong.

Five by three is 15. Those were the additional moneys. That is a very clear demonstration of the Taoiseach's political priorities. This unit, by his choice and by design, resides within his Department. It is simply not an explanation for him to say that agencies at an arm's length are the accountable ones in terms of the use or misuse of public moneys. It does not work that way. The Taoiseach is in charge, the unit is in his Department and he is answerable for the ethical and proper use and spending of those moneys. That is why I have made the point that the Taoiseach and the officials associated with the unit need now to give a full and transparent account of what was spent and how it was spent.

Let me make this point also.

Thank you, Deputy, your time is up.

In the midst of all of this has been a very clear tactic on the Taoiseach's part, or officials or agencies on his behalf, to exploit the financial situation of regional media. That is not lost on people either.

Deputy, the time is up.

The approach has been cynical. It has been underhand. The Taoiseach needs to stand this unit down and answer also the issue I raised with him on the Secretary General of his party - or of his Department, a Freudian slip perhaps - actually carrying out this independent review.

Can I put it to the Deputy-----

It is certainly not independent in that regard.

Deputy, please, you should not make an inference in respect of a respected public servant and align him with any political position. Please do not do that.

Withdraw.

You should withdraw it.

Martin Fraser, as I said earlier, is a person I know well and for whom I have great respect. Let me say this.

Withdraw that remark.

It is not me who has acted to compromise the position of a senior civil servant. That has been the action of the Government and the Taoiseach himself.

The Deputy's time is up. The Taoiseach to conclude.

I would really rue the day when I was respected by Deputy McDonald. We see what she means by respect-----

Hear, hear.

-----when she speaks about a public servant in that way. It is not that long ago that Deputy McDonald stood up in this Chamber and accused any number of people of having Ansbacher accounts and offshore accounts and they did not have them. She has yet to apologise for having done that. Once again, she has stood up here in this Chamber and maligned people who are not in this Chamber and I think that is wrong. It is not respectful. It is disrespectful. It is very wrong.

Answer the question.

I understand in relation to this matter a complaint has been made to the Standards in Public Office Commission. It is chaired by a High Court judge. It is independent. It is the guardian of the standards Acts, the ethics Acts and also the electoral Acts. That is the best body in my view to carry out any independent investigation. I am happy to answer any case that needs to be answered if there is a case to be made there.

Thank you Taoiseach. Time is up.

In relation to committees, I believe there are three committees looking for me to go before them. The committee I will go before is the one on finance, public expenditure and reform and Taoiseach. That is the one for my Department which, of course, covers the Estimates.

I understand the kind of thing that is going on here, which is try to inflict political damage on me and on the Government. It is a real shame that decent hard-working independent civil servants, not just the Secretary General of my Department-----

And journalists. Business people in Longford were slurred too.

-----but also the 15 people working in that unit, are having allegations made against them and are having their reputations questioned but yet no evidence whatsoever is presented to back that up. All there is to it is a series of claims about an agency with which the Government did not even have a direct contract. That is the truth of it.