Taoiseach says spin unit could be axed
Leo admits under-fire SCU is now a ‘distraction’
LEO Varadkar has said the controversial Government spin unit could be disbanded, having become a ‘distraction’.
The €5million-a-year Strategic Communications Unit was one of the first initiatives taken by Mr Varadkar upon becoming Taoiseach last year, but has been beset by criticism ever since.
Last week the Taoiseach ordered a review of the SCU amid claims it is politicising the civil service and has blurred the lines between journalism and advertising following a series of articles promoting the Government’s Project Ireland 2040.
‘That’s something that’s going to have to be examined,’ Mr Varadkar told RTÉ yesterday when asked about the possibility of disbanding the unit.
‘The unit was set up with a view to modernising and professionalising Government communications Controversy: Leo Varadkar – it’s had some success in that regard. It was set up as a unit to better explain the work of the Government and now it’s become a distraction from the work of Government.’
Opposition parties say taxpayer-funded stories in regional and national papers were not clearly marked as advertisein ments and unfairly promoted Fine Gael electoral candidates.
However, the Taoiseach maintains there was ‘scant evidence’ the unit was using public money to promote Fine Gael. He added: ‘I think there were things that could have been done better so I issued very clear instructions as to how things should operate in the future when it comes to any paid-for advertising by Government.’
Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin yesterday insisted the advertisements had been ‘a clear electoral pitch’ as he called for the unit to be disbanded.
He said it was no accident that two Fine Gael candidates had turned up in taxpayer-funded ads in a Longford regional paper ‘for a marginal constituency where Fine Gael have to win a seat’. ‘Ultimately the Government needs to realise this is a fundamentally wrong approach terms of our parliamentary democracy and the use of taxpayers’ money,’ he told RTÉ Radio 1.
Sinn Féin is set to table a motion demanding the unit be scrapped, and Mr Martin yesterday said Fianna Fáil is considering its own motion. ‘Essentially, it [the SCU] has become a propaganda unit,’ he told RTÉ.
Social Democrats co-leader Catherine Murphy has called for two senior civil servants – Martin Fraser, secretary general of the Department of the Taoiseach, and Robert Watt, secretary general of the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform – to appear before the Public Accounts Committee to answer questions about the operation of the unit.
She said: ‘Mr Watt and Mr Fraser... are supposed to be making sure that appropriate divisions are maintained so that the work of civil servants is not politicised in the way we have seen it happen with this unit.’ Ms Murphy added that the SCU ‘ought to be disbanded immediately’.
‘Fundamentally wrong approach’