The first involves John O’Donoghue’s trip to New York where €28,000 was spent in four days between himself, his wife, his private secretary and another senior civil servant.

This does not feature in the larger O’Donoghue FOI because this trip was paid for by Tourism Ireland.

One of the difficulties in divining the exact nature of Ministerial travel expenditure is the fact that it could be paid for by the Department itself, the Department of Foreign Affairs and most pertinently, any of the State or semi-State bodies under the general control of that government Department.

http://www.tribune.ie/article/2009/jul/26/odonoghue-spends-28000-four-night-junket-us/?q=o%27donoghue

Another story that slipped by largely under the radar is the 20-odd grand spent by Minister Martin Cullen and a number of officials on a trip to the Ryder Cup last year.

Mr Cullen stayed in an $800 a night hotel and flights alone for himself and two civil servants came to more than €14,000.

One spurious defence offered by supporters of John O’Donoghue is that the country could at least afford it when he was on his travels. No such excuse can be made for the Ryder Cup trip, which took place just last September as the economy went into freefall.

http://www.tribune.ie/article/2009/may/24/so-how-did-you-swing-this-one-minister/

I’m delighted to see Gavin’s Blog (http://www.gavinsblog.com/) posting up details of the full John O’Donoghue request, a big undertaking, which I simply wouldn’t have had time to do these past few weeks. So if people want to find out more of the actual nitty-gritty details, they’ll get it there. In our series of stories, I’ve tried my level best to give the complete picture of the spending that was involved but there is a lot of detail there and they are worth reading.

If there are any more stories to come, I will – in future – upload the relevant documents on this blog, time permitting.
In saying that, if my newspaper pays a significant sum of money for an FOI request, I think we are perfectly entitled to get first value-for-money out of it, despite the criticism we have received from some quarters.

I have said all along that documents regarding Ministerial expenses should not just be available under FOI, but that they should be published either online or, even better, made accessible for inspection by the general public.

There is also a strong misconception out there that the Department of Arts, Sport & Tourism are withholding information about this. They are not, and when our stories refer to incomplete information, it is simply that there are some missing documents. The Department has been quite open about this and I don’t believe there is any question of withholding data. Where information is blacked out, there is no conspiracy, it simply means that those costs do not relate to John O’Donoghue’s travels and are thus not being made available under the scope of the original FOI request.

If anybody has any questions or comments, feel free to make them.