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Donohoe, Varadkar and Coveney to attend Bilderberg meeting in Madrid

Minister for Public Expenditure taking part as Eurogroup head, while former taoiseach says he will be going at own expense

Paschal Donohoe, Simon Coveney and Leo Varadkar are due to attend a conference of the Bilderberg Group in Madrid this week. Photograph: Gareth Chaney/ Collins Photos

Martin Wall
Fri May 31 2024 - 06:00

Minister for Public Expenditure Paschal Donohoe and former taoiseach Leo Varadkar are due to attend a conference of the Bilderberg Group in Madrid this week.

Ryanair chief Michael O’Leary is also listed as a participant, as is Fine Gael’s Simon Coveney.

The Bilderberg Group describes the meeting as “an annual three-day forum for informal discussions designed to foster dialogue between Europe and North America”.

Critics have accused the organisation of being secretive and elitist.

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Mr Varadkar told The Irish Times on Thursday that he had never been to a Bilderberg group conference previously.

“[I] was happy to get the invitation and see for myself if it’s a good event. I am doing so at my own expense in my own time,” he said.

A spokeswoman for Mr Donohoe said he would be attending the conference in his capacity as president of the Eurogroup.

The private Bilderberg group conference in Madrid is due to consider geopolitical issues such as Ukraine and Russia as well as the Middle East and the US political situation in advance of the presidential election in November.

Other topics for discussion include the “future of warfare”, Europe’s economic challenges, climate, the changing face of biology and artificial intelligence.

Its meetings are held under “Chatham House Rules”, which means participants are free to use the information received, but neither the identity nor the affiliation of any speaker or other participant may be revealed.

Among those scheduled to take part in the meeting this weekend are Nato secretary general Jens Stoltenberg; former CIA chief David Petraeus; Wendy Sherman, former US deputy secretary of state; Thomas Wright, senior director for strategic planning at the National Security Council at the White House in Washington; Richard Phillips of the office of the director of national intelligence in the United States and Jonathan Finer, deputy US national security adviser.

Other political figures scheduled to attend are Charles Michel, president of the European Council, the prime minister of the Netherlands Mark Rutte and European commissioner Maroš Šefčovič.

From the business world those listed as taking part includes US billionaire investor Peter Thiel; Wael Sawan, chief executive of oil company Shell; Jane Fraser, chief executive of global bank Citi and Albert Bourla, the chairman and chief executive of pharmaceutical giant Pfizer.

The participation by Irish politicians at meetings of the Bilderberg group has been controversial in the past.

In the 1980s the then taoiseach Garret FitzGerald was criticised by Fianna Fáil leader Charles Haughey and by then Workers Party TD Proinsias De Rossa for taking part in a Bilderberg meeting in New York.

[ FitzGerald forced to pay for Bilderberg trip out of own funds ]

Dr FitzGerald told the Dáil in 1985 that the idea that the Bilderberg meeting represented “a sinister – or even a secret – plot to undermine the neutrality of non-members of the North-Atlantic Alliance or democracy in the West would come as a very big surprise indeed to the members of Government of other neutral countries”.

Martin Wall

Martin Wall

Martin Wall is the former Washington Correspondent of The Irish Times. He was previously industry correspondent

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