Prone tells Reilly's office to toughen up on tardy staff

PUBLIC RELATIONS consultant Terry Prone advised the private office of Minister for Health James Reilly that the department would have to get tough with officials who were tardy in preparing material for his official speeches.

Ms Prone’s company, the Communications Clinic, has an arrangement with the Minister, under which she provides advice on scripts for speeches.

Emails, released to The Irish Times under the Freedom of Information Act, give a rare insight into the tone of the advice given by outside consultants. Some of these show anxiety that steps be taken to avoid material being provided at the last minute to be worked into a speech for Dr Reilly.

In one email, sent in January by Ms Prone to the Minister’s private office, she said: “Bottom line – us being nice isn’t enough . . .

“And getting action out of people may require that action is taken at a higher level with the department.”

Ms Prone also warned the private office in another email sent in February, regarding an event in Dr Reilly’s home area of Fingal in north Dublin, that as he would be speaking in his own backyard he would “ad lib their legs off”. She signalled there would be little for her to contribute in terms of speech-writing for the event.

“I figure I’m severely redundant in relation to anything in his backyard. If he suddenly feels the urge for me to write something different, I stand braced, eager and ready to serve. XXXX! Tess.”

The Irish Times reported in February that Dr Reilly and Minister for Children Frances Fitzgerald were both paying out of their personal ministerial allowance for the Communications Clinic, whose directors are Ms Prone and Tom Savage, also chairman of the RTÉ board. Dr Reilly said he had paid €15,000 last year to the Communications Clinic.

Ms Prone told the Minister’s private office that the relevant part of the department, the HSE or any outside body had to be circulated with a directive as soon as it was agreed the Minister would speak at their event.

“The computers in the Minister’s office then need a flag system so that the day after the material was due to hit your desk, if it hasn’t, someone makes an irate phone call,” she told the private office.

Ms Prone’s comments followed problems with a speech the Minister was due to deliver in Peamount in Dublin.

In an email to the private office she wrote: “You’re always mortified when you have to toss a speech at me for rejigging late in the day and I do my best to be unpompous and turn it around quickly. Sure, we’re mighty, so we are. Except today it didn’t work.

“The Minister rang on his way to Peamount to read out a bit of what he’d been sent and observe that I wouldn’t normally offer him big long clunky sentences. (Big long clunky sentence had escaped me when I did it on Friday on my BlackBerry.)”

Ms Prone drafted a note for civil servants in the Department of Health regarding material for inclusion in Dr Reilly’s speeches. This said material had to be submitted to the Minister’s office 10 days before a speech was due to be delivered.