WHILE MOST HEADS of government in Europe and beyond have embraced Twitter in recent years, one of its early-adopters, our own Enda Kenny, has stopped tweeting altogether.
The Taoiseach’s official Twitter account, @EndaKennyTD, was set up in April 2010 but has been inactive since 8 July 2011.
His last tweet was a link to his weekly message:
Prior to that the account had been fairly active in the lead-up to and during the historic 2011 general election campaign.
For example, in late January 2011, Kenny was tweeting about televised debates and his meeting with the head of the European Commission.
He even did a bit of interaction with Twitter users.
Here’s his response to one tweeter who wanted to know what was so different about Fine Gael. Kenny’s response was, er, brief:
But once elected Taoiseach tweeting was almost non-existent. In fact, after he formally took over as head of government the account tweeted just twice before stopping altogether.
TheJournal.ie has learned that the inactivity is down to a disagreement between government officials and the Fine Gael party over how the account should be used.
The Government Press Office, and its official news service MerrionStreet.ie, cannot takeover use of Kenny’s Twitter account as it’s an account in his name and not that of the office of the Taoiseach. But officials close to Kenny have vetoed the account being used at all.
The reasons for this are unclear and the Government Press Office did not return a request for comment. One source close to the matter suggested it could be down to Kenny’s officials fearing a backlash from government opponents who would criticise any failure to engage on the social media platform.
Despite this, officials in the government news service maintain an active Facebook page – he personally did a Q&A from California earlier this year – and recently set up a Vine account.
Fine Gael’s social media department is said to be keen to use the account but without the approval of the Government Press Office it has remained inactive for majority of his time in government. Despite this the party is hoping to reactivate the account in the build up the next general election.
Fine Gael also declined to comment.
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
have your say