Seeing a tweet after midnight on a Saturday night from a Cabinet Minister had me wondering about who was up so late telling his constituency and followers about the latest programme they could benefit from (Cabinet Ministers are rare on twitter and they never engage, it’s usually to announce something in terms of funding or a new road, never to slag off their oppenents – all that might change next year though!).

I’ve recently started following Tony Killeen, the Minister for Defence and FF TD for Clare.

This is the tweet that led me to have a look at the link to his website.

At the end of the press release on the website there was contact details for Mark Dunphy of Dunphy PR who lists Minister Killeen as a client. It appears that this arrangement has been in place for some years.

I don’t think it’s usual for TD’s to use PR companies for local work.  The website is the Minister’s personal site rather than departmental.

Now it’s possible that he is using allowances for constituency staffing to pay the PR company but he would have additional resources as a Minister which mean that he can free up the constituency support available to TD’s to hire the PR company. (Thus placing opponents at an even greater disadvantage in terms of the resources available to them.)

No word of Minister Killeen retiring from politics so possibly this move to using  a PR company and getting online is in preparation for his election campaign.  I look forward to hearing more about who is paying the bill.