Between 2002 and 2005, the Ceann Comhairle John O’Donoghue and his wife Kate-Ann ran up an overseas travel bill of nearly €175,000.
Travel on board the government jet cost a similar amount and added to their travel in 2006 and 2007 the total bill for those five years came to more than €550,000.
As promised, these are the documents from the second round of the Freedom of Information request, which show how much was being spent on flights, hotel, car hire, subsistence and so on.
They are remarkable by their lack of detail compared to the first tranche of information issued to the Sunday Tribune late in July.
But, they also offer a stark illustration of just how much money was being spent from the day that John O’Donoghue took office.
Twenty four hours after we got this information, the Sunday Tribune was issued with a legal letter by John O’Donoghue’s solicitors.
In it, he said that the newspaper had “fundamentally misled” the Irish public in relation to his expenses.
A few days later, he made his first “apology” to other TDs. Two days after that, he finally said sorry.
The Sunday Tribune has appealed the second FOI decision on the basis that the information provided in the second request is far sparser than that of the original.
Anyway, the last document relates to the justification of this from the Department of Arts, Sport and Tourism [Part 1 and Part 2].
