ELAINE EDWARDS
MINISTER FOR Agriculture Brendan Smith and his officials ran up bill for car hire on overseas trips of €26,000 between May and December last year, including €19,000 on a single trip to trade talks in Geneva.
Figures for expenses incurred by the Minister in the course of overseas trips were supplied by the Department of Agriculture on foot of a Freedom of Information request by The Irish Times.
In total, the documentation details expenditure of €75,136 for car hire, flights, travel and subsistence and hotel/VIP charges for Mr Smith and two Junior Ministers in 2008. They cover the period from Mr Smith’s appointment by Taoiseach Brian Cowen in May last year until the end of December.
They include expenses incurred by Mr Smith, a Fianna Fáil TD for Cavan, and Junior Ministers Trevor Sargent and Tony Killeen.
They do not, however, include expenses incurred by Mr Smith’s predecessor, Mary Coughlan, or junior ministers Mary Wallace and John Browne, who served at the department in the government of former taoiseach Bertie Ahern up to May 2008.
Some €19,742.93 was paid by the Department of Agriculture to Globe Limousines in Geneva, in respect of the hire of a car and driver for Mr Smith and a mini- van and driver for his delegation, from July 20th, 2008, to July 30th, 2008. Mr Smith’s limousine hire amounted to 45 per cent of the bill of 31,912 Swiss francs, (€21,086) while the rest was for hire of the mini-van used by his officials.
A portion of the invoice for hire of a second mini-van was forwarded by the Department of Agriculture to the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment for payment. This is not included in the figures provided.
Mr Smith, along with Ms Coughlan and Junior Ministers from their departments, were attending the World Trade Organisation talks. About 150 countries were represented at the talks in July 2008, which collapsed without agreement.
The Minister’s hotel bill for his stay in Geneva for the WTO talks amounted to €4,790.80 out of total “hotel/VIP” charges of €8,159.12 between May and December. The Geneva hotel cost approximately €460 a night, excluding tax and breakfast.
An amount of €3,312 in hotel costs was incurred by Mr Smith and his delegation on a trip to a summit in Rome in June 2008.
Mr Smith also incurred car-hire expenses of €870 (a car and a minibus) for a two-day trip to Brussels in May and a bill of €940 for car hire (described as a people-carrier) for two days when he attended a council of ministers meeting in Brussels in July.
Flights for Mr Smith, Mr Killeen and Mr Sargent cost €16,692 in 2008. Some €10,387.31, or 62 per cent, of that amount was on flights for Mr Sargent and his staff.
Mr Sargent also incurred €1,233.35 in “hotel/VIP” charges between January and December.
A sum of €416.08 was spent on a car and airport VIP charges in respect of the collection of Mr Smith and his delegation from the train station at Gare D’Austerlitz in Paris on September 5th last year to bring them to Charles de Gaulle airport. According to the documentation, the Minister had been attending a “sheep conference” in Limoges, France.
Official gifts bought on behalf of the three Ministers in 2008 cost €1,111. Gifts bought by Mr Smith included a vase, costing €58.33, purchased from Cavan Crystal for presentation to the Slovene agriculture minister at the informal council meeting in Ljubljana on May 25th, 2008. Mr Smith also bought four CDs by The Chieftains for €40 to bring as gifts on a trade mission to the US in November.