Government by press release

It’s funny how transparent the government’s media trickery is.  Everyone knows that this is the time of year when Cabinet members will be on their holliers, except for the occasional pesky event like the WTO talks in Geneva, or Martin Cullen‘s no doubt necessary 3 week jaunt to Beijing.  So what are the ways of making it seem like the government is still around?  A designated minister to pop up every so often and grab a headline (apparently it’s Micheal Martin this weekend), and the time-honoured practice of every media handler: the delayed-action press release, written well ahead of time and released into the media bloodstream so it sounds like a contemporaneous reaction.

And so it is that visitors to the official Taoiseach website on Sunday night already know his reaction to a report to be released on Monday –

The Taoiseach said: ‘The NESF brings together a very wide range of experiences and perspectives with a view to understanding more fully both process and policy implementation issues.  The Forum fulfils an important advisory role through its programme of work and by providing an opportunity for individuals and groups to engage on policy developments and implementation issues.’  He pointed out that ‘these assessments will be of considerable value to Government in determining priorities for the future across the broad social policy agenda.’

The only question is how many more of these things are sitting in the queue waiting for someone to hit “publish”, as they did a tad early on this occasion.  Perhaps we should ask that the pol corrs clarify whether any ministerial statements that they print between now and September were delivered by someone with a pulse.