TAOISEACH ENDA KENNY caused a bit of bafflement this evening with his sudden reappearance on Twitter (after a three year absence) at 8pm on a Sunday night.
We can reveal that his return to Twitter isn’t about wanting to live-tweet Love/Hate, but to draw people’s attention to #littlethings, a mental health initiative:
A spokesperson for the Taoiseach told us:
We’ve been looking at this for some time now, the issue is something that’s close to the Taoiseach’s heart. This was seen as an appropriate way to enter Twitter.
The account is a joint venture between Fine Gael and Government spokespeople, and will be managed by his staff. But we’re assured that the tweets will all be the Taoiseach’s words.
His previous tweet (which now appears to have been deleted) was about his weekly message, and was posted on 8 July 2011. And before that he even took to Twitter to chat about televised debates and reply to some tweets.
But once Kenny was elected Taoiseach, his tweeting stopped.
TheJournal.ie had already attempted to get to the bottom of the situation last month, and learned that the inactivity was “down to a disagreement between government officials and the Fine Gael party over how the account should be used”.
As we explained at the time:
The Government Press Office, and its official news service MerrionStreet.ie, cannot takeover use of Kenny’s Twitter account as it’s an account in his name and not that of the office of the Taoiseach. But officials close to Kenny have vetoed the account being used at all.
Now it seems they have come to a little agreement.
- Additional reporting Hugh O’Connell
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