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TAOISEACH LEO VARADKAR has said his new strategic communications unit has cost nothing to date.
Since taking office, Varadkar has set about establishing, what he describes as a “small unit”, within his own department to communicate the government’s message more clearly to the public.
Currently, all communications are dealt with through the Government Information Service (GIS), which includes the Government Press Secretary and a number of press officers. Each department also has its own press office which deals with its brief.
The Taoiseach, who is known for how he handles the media, has argued that the new unit will ensure all departments are conveying the same message. However, those in opposition view it as a new “spin machine” for his own department.
“As things stand there has been no additional expenditure, but there will of course be down the line, but that has to be determined yet,” Varadkar said today.
TheJournal.ie questioned the Taoiseach this morning about the cost of establishing such a team – which includes well-known marketing expert, John Concannon – the man behind the 1916 commemorations, the Wild Atlantic Way, The Gathering and Creative Ireland.
While Concannon is heading up the new unit, Andrea Pappin is also part of it. Pappin previously headed up the Government’s Brexit information service and was previously involved in the government’s action plan for jobs.
Varadkar said both Concannon and Pappin, who are public servants, have been redeployed to their new positions, at no additional cost.
Salaries
Concannon is on an assistant secretary grade which commands a salary of between €122,313 and €139,728, while Pappin is on an assistant principal higher grade of between €83,519 and €102,212.
While both are retaining their salaries, Varadkar could not rule out further spending in the future.
‘No additional expenditure’
“I believe good communication is important. Good communication is a virtue and very often people say to me, and they are right, that the government has not been very good at explaining to people what it does and what is happening.
“The strategic information unit is being set up to better communicate to the public, taxpayers and citizens what the government does on its behalf, how it spends taxpayers money and by government I do not mean politicians of the government, I mean the public service and sector as a whole,” the Taoiseach told TheJournal.ie.
Questions about the costings of the new unit have also been levelled at Varadkar by Fianna Fáil, the Labour Party and People Before Profit.
“Never before has the establishment of a communications unit been handled with so much secrecy. We have been told who will head up the new unit, but not his salary or grade. We don’t know how many people will work in the unit. And we don’t know what it will cost the taxpayer,” said Labour leader Brendan Howlin.
‘Spin machine’
Meanwhile, People Before Profit’s Gino Kenny said the unit is simply being established to re-brand the Fine Gael and Varadkar brand, adding that it is more about “spin”.
The Taoiseach was quick to defend the new unit, saying it was not being established for any electoral purposes.
“It is absolutely the case that no office within the Department of An Taoiseach can be used for electoral purposes - so I can give you absolute assurances of that,” he said.
However, Howlin has pointed out that, in the past, individual civil servants have been seconded to work for government ministers, but said in such cases, these have been acknowledged as political appointments.
“The Taoiseach cannot hand-pick staff from across the public sector, and then claim that they are not political appointments. If this new unit does not have a political purpose, then all roles within it, including the most senior role, should be advertised and open to all civil servants to apply for,” he said.
Today the Taoiseach insisted the new team is about “communications and not about political campaigns”.
While the Taoiseach has said that, for now, there are no additional costs associated with setting up the unit, it’s understood a replacement for Concannon will have to be found to head up the Creative Ireland programme, which is pressing on with future commemoration plans for the Irish Civil War.
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Happy Birthday man
I wonder what he would have to say about a country with a the homeless epidemic raging and hundreds of thousands of families crushed under spiraling rents and mortgage debt as the state facilities vulture funds masquerading as charities to snap up homes at fire sale prices?
Or a state which is systematically dismantling the public health hand education systems using a lack of funding as justification while they fight tooth and nail to ensure Apple hangs on to €19 billion in dodged taxes?
Are you suggesting Apple broke the law? If you have information pertaining to the appeal you should report it to the Gards immediately.
@Fiannaoicht: Er, the EU has judged that they broke the law.
Have you been asleep for the last three months?
Note use of the word ‘appeal’. RTFM.
@Fiannaoicht: Would you ever FO back to your box you amadan
@Fiannaoicht:
This Irish Times article sums it up.
The Double Irish scam which the likes of Google use to funnel their profits offshore to avoid tax is technically legal but of course deeply immoral. The double Irish is a 2 company structure where one company pays Intellectual Property royalties to a second company which is registered in ireland but tax resident in some tax haven the Cayman Islands or Bermuda etc.
Apple in contrast used a single company (Single Irish) structure and the IP royalties were moved from one branch of the company to another offshore/HQ branch which was tax resident nowhere. This is the selective benefit that Commission has picked up on and has ordered Apple to pay the €13 billion in back taxes.
Both the double and single Irish are disgusting financial 3 card trickery to allow the corporates to dodge their taxes but only the single Irish is in breach of E.U. law. It looks like our Revenue Commissioners didn’t advise Apple well enough on how to legally avoid their taxes.
A great visionary I would love to hear his take on the seagulls running the shop over the last 15 years!!!
Happy birthday
@⚡ Seánie ⚡:
Do we attribute the lies, spin, greed and desperation to this man too?
A true public servant who enriched our economy. He deserves all the plaudits he is receiving. He makes mediocrities of most of our senior politicians/ civil servants down through the years. Happy 100th birthday!
Let’s not get too dewy eyed. The capitalist model which Whitaker espouses has failed millions of Irish people with mass poverty, unemployment and emigration being the norm for most of the history of the state. It has served the pampered corporate, political, legal and administrative class very well though which is the reason that Whitaker is revered by this group.
An overview of Irish capitalism since Independence.
“Unemployment and emigration were near constant features in southern Ireland from so-called independence right up to the ‘Celtic Tiger’. At its heart, this was down to an inability of capitalism to create jobs, and develop industry (for reasons I will come on to later). In fact, overall the number of jobs declined – with slightly less employed in 1992 than 1922, a shocking indictment of capitalism1. Whilst the number of jobs did fluctuate slightly, it remained largely stagnant around the one million mark.
This is not to say there were not new jobs being created, but that those created were really just replacing jobs lost elsewhere in the economy. So, for instance, in the 1960’s over 118k new jobs were creatred, but there was a corresponding loss of 116k jobs, meaning only a net job creation of 2k .2 And whilst there was slight net growth in the number of jobs in the 60’s, and the 70’s, this was countered by net job loss in the 50’s and 80’s.
The result of this job stagnation was that a huge amount of young people were ‘surplus to requirement’ for Irish capitalism, which was unable to provide them with work. This meant that mass unemployment was an “outstanding feature” of the Irish economy, according to the famous government paper by TK Whitaker in 1958, and it’s twin – mass emigration. Consistently from 1922 to 1992 Ireland’s rate of unemployment was one of the worst in Europe, and in that period 1.7m people emigrated.3
Again, this is not to say there was no let up, or the entirety of this period was the same. At times, one or other of these features was less prominent. However, the underlying stagnation in jobs meant that when one receded it was usually accompanied by a rise in the other. So, for instance, in the 1970’s emigration fell to 10k a year, and there was in fact net immigration for the first time in the history of the state.4 However, at the same time, unemployment was on the rise. During the most serious crises, both emigration and unemployment rose hand in hand, such as in the 1980’s when unemployment reached almost one in five, and 1% were emigrating every year.”
Benit, did you not read the part about emigration, poverty and unemployment before he came along! Are you that thick?
@Benjy Mooney:
How many times have you changed your name.
Ireland of the 50s was multiple times worse off than today. If people think it is not well there is no point in even auguring the point.
He saw the CB as a controlling mechanism and was disgusted how it lost its way. He indirectly argued against the Euro.
You will forgive me for copy and pasting.
“Whitaker’s long-held concerns about income inequality and the detachment of the financial markets from a sense of societal responsibility or accountability are more relevant than ever today.
In the 1980s, he asked: “Is it little more than a fiction that parliament and government are sovereign? Does the State’s power rest precariously on day-by-day tolerance of its authority by powerful sectional interests? Are governments nowadays to be compared to the totally deaf Beethoven in his later years, just being allowed to go through the motions of conducting the orchestra while the real control is being exercised elsewhere?
Said in the 80′s,the problem of the last 20 year’s was there were no Whitakers in a position of power to shout stop. He had vision from the economy, to regulation, North and even Irish Language.
An overview of Irish leftist socialism since Independence :……………………………………………………….
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
…………………Nothing to see here.
@dublinlad:
Mass poverty, unemployment and emigration continued despite the policies that Whitaker implemented and remain to this day with a lack of a home being the most acute form of poverty.
Did you miss this part?
“In fact, overall the number of jobs declined – with slightly less employed in 1992 than 1922, a shocking indictment of capitalism”
@ktsiwot:
“Whitaker’s long-held concerns about income inequality and the detachment of the financial markets from a sense of societal responsibility or accountability are more relevant than ever today.”
The problems of inequality, the parasitic nature of the finance sector and the amorality of profit seeking are inherent to the capitalist system. Whitaker condemned the symptoms while promoting the cause.
@ktsiwot:
The limitations of the FDI strategy from the link:
“With the turn away from protectionism in the 1950’s came a new focus on attracting foreign direct investment, to act as a motor for the economy where domestic investment had failed. This was moderately successful for a period, but highlighted another key problem that the Irish economy has faced: the inability of reliance on FDI to provide sustainable growth.
The years 1960 to 1979 was the initial ‘golden age’ of this policy, during which time there was a rapid rise in manufacturing output, and a re-balancing of Irish exports from primary goods to secondary, with foreign direct investment the driving force. Between 1958 and ’73 manufacturing output grew by 6.7% a year, with the numbers employed in the sector growing at 2.4% a year too. By the 1970’s multinationals employed 68,500 working in manufacturing, the proportion of national production being exported had doubled to over 40%, with merchandise exports finally exceeding livestock.13
This FDI-led growth, however, proved to be sporadic, and weak. For one, much of the investment was reliant on heavy subsidisation, grants and tax incentives. It was also unstable, so whilst there was growth in FDI in the 60s, and much of the 70s, it stalled from 70 to 73 and declined throughout the 80s.14 On each occasion, international events played the key role, as export oriented FDI depended not just on the situation in the country the company is from, but where they are hoping to export to. The Irish economy also found itself lagging behind countries, for instance, even during this ‘golden age’, Irish growth rates were far below the rest of Europe.
The growth that did take place, was also quite shallow, both in terms of the type of investment and in terms of its impact on the domestic economy. Much of the companies that invested were in so-called footloose industries such as chemicals and computers, which don’t require intensive investment locally outside of construction costs. Instead the main costs were materials, so the companies were relatively free to move on as they saw fit. Linked to this, once companies set up in Ireland, there was very little re-investment or expansion from them, meaning that in order to keep up investment levels there was a need for a constant flow of new companies in. For this reason, the industrialisation that did take place has been described as ‘dependent industrialisation’.15
Most importantly, the impact of this rapid expansion in exports and level of manufacturing output on the domestic economy itself was actually very shallow. Almost all the materials used in production were imported, and almost all the products were exported, most starkly demonstrated by US pharmaceutical companies who imported 97% of materials and exported 98% of their outputs16. Other than things such as legal and financial services therefore, there was actually very few ‘linkages’ with the rest of the economy. The profits that were made were minimally taxed, and 98.5% were repatriated out of the country. And whilst jobs were created, multinationals only employed a third of the manufacturing workforce, but accounted for the majority of output and exports, and the vast majority of the profits”
@Benjy Mooney:
This must be the 3rd or 4th time you have changed the first name, Why?
@ktsiwot:
My username name is irrelevant, as is yours.
Are you unable to address the substantive point? That is the failure of Whitaker’s vision of capitalism.
In summary:
“From ‘independence’ to the ‘Celtic Tiger’; both reliance on domestic and international capitalism proved incapable of providing a stable basis for a strong economy. Domestic capitalism – under both protectionism and free market competition – failed to develop viable, competitive industry. And the reliance on export oriented multi nationals, with very few linkages to the domestic economy, resulted in only shallow and unstable development. Throughout it all, the Irish economy remained generally weak and backwards suffering from mass unemployment and emigration.”
Fu___ck off benjy
@Benjy Mooney:
There are many issues with capitalism, as even Mr Whitaker suggests in one of my posts. However if we want to live in the 1950s with protectionism and little or no trade (only agriculture to the UK), we would still be in horse and carts. We live in a very interconnected world (maybe too interconnected) . For what it is worth I will take Mr Whitaker’s vision any day ahead of the rubbish you spout. You have some good examples from your previous name regarding economic theories you can have Zimbabwe, Venesuala, USSR. Don’t give the rubbish about economic equality in Cuba there is no economy to have equality their.
@Benjy Mooney: Ah jaysus there’s three of you :(
@ktsiwot:
The article also fails to mention Whitaker’s admiration for Margaret Thatcher’s vision:
“In 1993 he suggested Margaret Thatcher’s “most creditable and enduring achievement was to re-establish the supremacy of government and parliament over sectional interests”
By “sectional interests” of course Whitaker means the working class. The capitalist class interests were staunchly protected and advanced by Thatcher’s government and every British government since.
Great article about a great Drogheda man who is under valued and under appreciated.
@Peter Matthews: He was born in Down!
One story from is biography that i liked was. Himself and Jack Lynch were walking into Stormount for a meeting. Ian Paisley was protesting outside chanting No popery here. Jack Lynch turned to Whitaker and asked him. Which one of us do you think he thinks is the pope.
He certainly did the State some service.
Deserves his pension, unlike quite a few of the politicians he had to work with.
Is he looking for a job by any chance?
Great article. Somebody on journal can actually write in English.
Great man TKW always read many articles about him ! He will we deserve the cheque from MD !
Just in time for Christmas. Lovely.
€2,450….received.
@Greg — Did he also get a complimentary poem penned by the little fella? :p
More articles like this please! We need to know who and what got Ireland to where it is now. We also need journalism with Whitaker’s spirit of integrity. If you don’t provide it, we’re left with the trolls and commentators keen to preach cynicism, half-truths and despair. Thanks for enlightening us and Happy Birthday to the man himself.
Our economy is built on the guidelines of Whitakers white paper even today. A massive contribution to our move from an agricultural to industrial based ecenomy.
Happy birthday and thank you
Happy birthday Dr Whittaker. Have a lovely day and thanks for all you did for our country.
Imagine, a civil servant with the best interests if his country at heart. He was probably the last one…all self serving now…
@ eircodes, If he was working today he’d be subject to the same slander and name calling as everyone else unfortunately!
He had a nice signature (on the pound notes)
Wonder what he thinks of trumps plans?
@Maurice Bourke: I’m right down the road from Trump and even I’m clueless to his plans. Nice article.
Proof that fossil fuels are net benefit to people if you can afford to have access to them
have your say