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IT’S FINALLY BEEN revealed just how much the Taoiseach’s new Strategic Communications Unit (SCU) is going to cost in 2018 – some €5 million.
Those on the opposition benches have been asking about staffing and other costs since its inception, as well as inquiring about whether the top jobs would be filled through the Public Appointments Service.
The new SCU exists in tandem with the current Government Information Service (GIS) which will continue to run all day-to-day communications concerning the Department of the Taoiseach.
Much debate has been generated by the new media unit, which has been described as something of a personal project for the Taoiseach since he took up office in early June.
Varadkar has long been the focus of accusations that public image is a higher priority for him than other political concerns.
However, he claimed that the new unit will incur no additional expense for the exchequer, and will be funded entirely from within “existing allocations”.
Buried deep in the Budget Expenditure document, the full cost of what the unit will cost is revealed.
It states:
“In addition to existing services, resources will be allocated to new areas such as the Strategic Communications Unit in the Department of the Taoiseach.”
A government spokesperson reiterated the Taoiseach’s previous point that the unit would be cost neutral in 2018 due to the savings it aims to achieve next year.
“Clear communications is a virtue. People deserve to know what their Government is doing and what they are entitled to. The Strategic Communications initiative will be cost neutral in 2018 by generating efficiencies across Government Departments and ensuring collaboration on major campaigns,” said the spokesperson.
“The spending will come from within existing resources. Furthermore, the overall budget for the Department of the Taoiseach is down 2% for 2018,” added the statement.
Hitting out at the announcement today, Fianna Fáil’s Dara Calleary said the government had awarded €5 million to its own “cheerleading machine”.
He said that €5 million “would buy a lot of hours for home help” and could have been spent on more worthwhile items.
“You keep spinning, we’ll keep delivering,” he said.
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In communist regimes, they spend millions on propaganda offices.
In wonderful capitalist systems, they spend a small sum of €5 million to convince people that homelessness and 2 year hospital waiting lists doesn’t exist
@Franklin Roosevelt: who keeps telling the pollsters they like leo the lounge lizard.
@Eileen O’Sullivan: We must love Leo, other ways we’re will be racists and homophobic !
This is crazy stuff.
@David Huston: 100 % they should spend their own party funds on spin.
@David Huston: enjoy your fiver a week.
@David Huston: yup but it’s ireland what would expect?
Keep the recovery going lads..
@Willy Malone: the good times will always role in leinster house especially in the bar….
@Willy Malone: Keep voting FF / FG lads..
What can you say# speechless… But I will say €5 million will do nothing to change my opinion on Leo…. He is useless.
@LITTLEONE: Ah now – how can you say that?
His memory about what gown Princess Diana was wearing at any given point in time is impeccable.
So when I look around and see young people earning minimum wages with no hope to either rent or buy, someone will tell me that this is the free market working at it’s best and can’t be interfered with, (unless you are a vulture fund who can buy thousands of houses, sit on them, create a false lack of supply and over demand situation, as as Michael Noonan said, “Vultures, You Know, Carry Out A Very Good Service In The Ecology”). And for that they get €5m! Thanks Leo, but rohypnol would have been cheaper!
@David Knight:
The free market is an utter failure and within a generation will have gone the way of communism.
@David Knight: the amount on here winging about the €5 people on the dole are getting (5% of the population) the majority of which will be looking for a job and this crap is going on! €5 million to make Leo look good. Shocking.
@Colin Morris: The point is it’s NOT a free market. It is being falsely controlled by people who control vast amounts of money. They have purchased literally thousands of houses for a fraction of what was originally paid for them, and are now sitting on them, creating a shortage of houses in the market in order to push up the prices. Likewise rents are spiraling due to the same distorted shortage. They will make huge profits, but our young people will be robbed of even a hope of having a place to live.
@Deborah Behan: Couldn’t agree more.
If they want it, they can fund it themselves. Wasting citizens money on spin should be seen as treason!
This is lunacy and when you email a Minister they ‘copy and paste’ a response.
I had to call Revenue today, they told me to go online to get help with my question
That’s over 96,000 Euros a day!!!!!
@Jonathan Power: Leo jayzus.
@Eileen O’Sullivan: jobs for the boys I wonder who’s getting all the tenders? That’s incredible money
@Jonathan Power: over 13000 a day .still an insane amount
@Jonathan Power: thats a week.over 13000 a day…still too mucg
@Jonathan Power: thats a week.over 13000 a day…still too much
@Jonathan Power: 96,000 * 365 = 35,040,000
So many sour comments / complaints but that is what got our neighbours into trouble.
This is scandalous. Even Enda wasn’t this brazen.
@Richard Sweeney: I knew some day I will hear this – Enda being better than Leo !!!
@cortisola: Not better, just a different type of inept/dishonest/corrupt
So a Ministry of Truth set up to tell the citizens lies is going to cost the citizens 5m. FG as a minority government do not have any mandate to be making free with public money so Leo can bamboozle people with spin and lies.
It really is the epitomey of the Emperor’s Clothes, expensive clothes at that.
& lo Fine Gael spies Fianna Fail
& glides a stride across the hall
FF gets up twinkle eyes no coy
Has never seen such a strapping boy
And then embrace with puckered lips
Love is returned with wiggle hips
For this it is hard to deny
The kiss is Confidence & Supply.
#budget18
Leo Varadkar’s cost neutral “strategic communications unit”
is now going to cost us €5m each and every year for the new spin machine.
€5m would pay for 56 SNAs special needs assistants in schools but Leo’s pet vanity project style over substance must take precedence.
Ireland gets what we deserve every time we vote these clowns back in! They are laughing at voters and it’s them who have the last laugh. Quiet simply put, the irish electorate are to blame for putting these chancers in office, they’ll be back in again next time around. Ugh.
Oh. That’s incredibly lousy, announcing it on budget day. It’s millions down the drain, it won’t encourage many to switch their support to this joke of a party.
@Adrian: that’s 5 million added onto the potentially 20 million a year all the FG tds together are claiming in salary, expenses and pensions, plus another few million on Leo’s expenses alone as taoiseach, and it all amounts to FG being a very expensive political party, too expensive in fact.
and FF say: “You keep spinning, we’ll keep delivering,” he said.
‘Delivering’ what exactly?
Does this figure include the socks budget?
@Deano Cracow: or designer sunglasses?
Using our money let’s just remember that at the next election
€13,628 per day , imagine what that money could do for services and people that really need it. Enraging to say the least
@Predator: it’s actually over 96,000 a day Predator. Crazy money
@Jonathan Power: sorry your right I need to back to school:)
This is getting harder and harder to take. We are waiting on a respite house here and our day services unit is under threat but go ahead Leo and polish your image with €5m.
We really are a shower of muppets for putting up with this government spending, then again berrty had his mabaline expense back in the day!
is the 5mill all new/additional spend?
Useless as a minister for health, Useless as a party leader, who voted for him!
Well Darragh Ye can always pull the plug on FG and INDO if Ye FF are not happy with it ok
Given how ill informed most people seem to be, getting their information from clowns in the journal comment section, in the hairdresser, from a bloke in the pub etc., it’s probably a good investment in educating the nation on how we spend the 60bn it takes to run the country, and plans for the country’s future.
@Chef Harold: Probably? That basically blows the rest of your comment apart.
@Chef Harold: It’s the government’s way of spinning lies at us, but good for you if you believe their nonsense.
have your say