Wednesday, February 4, 2009
High Flying Ministers
The Department of Defence has confirmed that the Minister for Defence Willie O'Dea used the Government Gulfstream IV aircraft for 11 trips in 2008 at a cost of €515,141. The longest trip was on December 14 when Minister O'Dea accompanied Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment Mary Coughlan to a meeting in Texas with Michael Dell ahead of Dell's announcement of 1,900 redundancies at it's Limerick facility. The Dell factory is in Minister O'Dea's constituency.
The 20 hour 50 minute flight routed Baldonnel - Knock - Bangor, Maine - Austin, Texas at a cost of €7,890 per hour or €164,000 in total.
The informataion came to light as a result of the Dail Public Accounts Committee investigation into financial matters at FAS, the government training body. The PAC uncovered the fact that Department of Finance guidelines for Ministerial travel were not being followed. Minister O'Dea's travel consisted of 8 overseas and 3 domestic trips totaling over half a million euro.
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1 comment:
The question maybe should be more, do we (the irish people) need a government corporate jet fleet as opposed to, should ministers use the fleet. Surely if the resources have being acquired they should be used (albeit prudently such as visiting Mr. Dell) by our government representatives.
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