ANALYSIS:Our public representatives are spending up to €40,000 on PR services
DO OUR Government Ministers really need a secretarial allowance? On top of their salary and expenses, they are already able to avail of press offices, secretarial support and – at least in the case of Cabinet Ministers – constituency support and special advisers.
There is also the “public representation allowances”, which can be used to pay for expenses in constituency offices, mobile phones, home phones and newspaper advertising.
But the secretarial allowance is separate from all that.
Under this scheme a Minister can claim a fully vouched annual amount of up to €41,902 for secretarial assistance, IT assistance and training.
Alternatively, they have the option of claiming part-vouched or unvouched expenses for services amounting to €8,888, and an additional €11,591 in vouched expenses.
The way this public money is being spent by Ministers has been private – until now.
Figures released under the Freedom of Information Act show that two-thirds of our Ministers and Ministers of State are availing of the unvouched scheme. Despite the fact that many have special advisers and press offices, they are choosing to spend significant amounts of their secretarial allowances on public relations.
Minister of State for Small Business John Perry paid more than €40,000 on public relations, employing former Fine Gael party press officer Sinéad Fennell.
Similarly, Shane McEntee, Minister of State for Food, paid a total of just over €40,000 to Liam Cahill Consultancy and Cahill Sports Emporium. Mr Cahill, a former RTÉ presenter, has offered PR advice and speech-writing advice to numerous ministers over the years, including Máire Geoghegan-Quinn, David Andrews and former Labour Party leader Pat Rabbitte.
Fine Gael Minister Fergus O’Dowd was another big spender on public relations. He paid €16,500 to a firm called MediaConsult last year, as well as more than €7,000 to that company’s principal consultant, Darren Hughes, so far this year. Mr O’Dowd also paid just under €10,000 to Amárach Consulting last year.
Minister for Children Frances Fitzgerald spent €23,000 on the services of PR firms on a number of occasions in 2011, mostly hiring the Communications Clinic – whose directors are PR consultant Terry Prone and chairman of the RTÉ board Tom Savage.
So too did Minister for Health James Reilly, who spent €18,000 on services offered by the Communications Clinic, such as speech-writing and public relations advice.
In addition to PR, many are spending significant amounts on “temporary vouched employees” or “secretarial assistants”. In many cases, these individuals are either party members or councillors. There are no guidelines to prevent this and no rules to say this is wrong. The money is exempt from rules governing public procurement, which specify that public bodies must publicly tender for services.
However, the manner in which this money is spent and the lack of transparency is likely to feed into even more cynicism over how public money is being used for political purposes.
* This article was amended on April 18 th, 2012 to amend a factual error.
