€5,000 spent to promote flood plan on social media

City Hall has defended spending €5,000 to promote the Lower Lee Flood Relief Scheme on social media saying it was to combat inaccuracies in the public domain.

Officials from Cork City Council said that it was committed to using social media to ensure that facts of the scheme were properly reflected until the scheme is submitted to the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform in the coming months.

The €140m flood plan is an OPW project and Cork City Council officials have been members of the Lower Lee Flood Relief Scheme (LLFRS) Steering Committee for some time.

The controversial plan came up for discussion during a Cork City Council on Monday after Cllr Oliver Moran of the Green Party, asked about the amount of resources being pumped into the social media campaign.

He also said he didn’t like the tone of the some of the posts that were tweeted out recently from the LLFRS account.

Director of Services, Valerie O’Sullivan, disagreed that there was tone in their tweets adding that the “tone was factual”.

She also told councillors that there has been criticisms levelled against the OPW and its project partners for their lack of “comprehensive communication about the details and evolution of the scheme in the past”.

She said that this led to a “plethora of inaccuracies and misrepresentations” about the scheme across a range of media, including social media.

Ms O'Sullivan continued: “To date, the facts presented and the clarifications provided through this communications exercise have been greatly welcomed by the Cork Business Association, Cork Chamber of Commerce, various developers, the general public and other organisations.”

She said that the council and the OPW are using social media to ensure the facts of the scheme are “properly reflected”.

It allows both authorities to “set the record straight when untruths and factual inaccuracies appear in the public domain”.

To date, the cost of the LLFRS social media presence and activity is roughly in the region of €5,000, the cost of which will be shared among both agencies proportionately, she confirmed.