385. Deputy Thomas Gould asked the Minister for Finance for a breakdown of all spending on external communications and media, by company, including the amount spent and purpose of spend, in each of the past five years, in tabular form. [61212/25]

The information requested by the Deputy in relation to the amount spent by my Department on external communications and media in the past five years to date is set out in tabular form below.

* The Department was running a consumer awareness campaign as part of a range of competition measures agreed with the European Commission to raise awareness and promote customer switching in the retail financial product area. This was agreed in the context of the restructuring plans for AIB and PTSB. The cost of the campaign was recouped from the two banks.

** The amount was recouped from the NTMA.

*** This relates to online advertising spend and it may include some traditional forms of advertising.