Make-up, mobiles and miscellaneous ... that’ll be €6m ministers, please
About €3m was spent on the mobile phone bills of department employees, more than €240,285 on photographers, €604,671 on media monitoring, €1.6m on entertainment and in excess of €750,000 on newspapers and magazines.
The Taoiseach’s media monitoring unit, which employs six people, has cost €373,524 to date this year. Despite having press officers based in each of the departments, some have recruited private companies for monitoring and press cutting services.
The figures on the government’s additional expenses were supplied to Fine Gael yesterday following a series of parliamentary questions.
The €85,135 expenditure by Health, €49,164 by Foreign Affairs, €29,368 by Defence and €21,280 by Social and Family Affairs on media monitoring was described as a “total inefficient use of the administration available to departments” by Fine Gael’s Fergus O’Dowd
“There should be joined-up thinking here and a one- stop shop, one centre, one group offering the service.”
The substantial costs associated with buying newspapers for departmental staff was also criticised by Fine Gael. According to the figures €132,228 was spent by the Taoiseach’s department and €70,218 by the Department of Justice this year on daily and weekly publications. In the Department of Enterprise 610 copies of newspapers are bought on a weekly basis, averaging out at €120 per day.
Aside from the Taoiseach and the Health Minister Mary Harney, the Minister for Finance, Brian Cowen, is the only other member of cabinet to submit expenses for make-up. In 2004, he spent €550 on make-up followed by €750 last year but has not felt the need for make-up so far this year.
The Taoiseach, meanwhile, has continued to invest in his make-up range for Dáil and television appearances but the expenditure has dropped from €27,722 in 2004 to €15,593 this year.
Mr Ahern said since the advent of television “people appearing before camera under artificial lighting conditions are required to use make-up to counter the effects of the strong lighting that is used by media”.
While ministers’ phone bills have been kept to a premium, Mr O’Dowd queried, why the Minister for Community, Rural and Gaeltacht had been provided with three phones.
The Minister for Education indicated money spent on personal calls is being recouped. This year €14,548 has been retrieved.
The Department of Foreign Affairs emerged as the biggest spenders in photography with a bill of €53,955.
