Government spends €100,000 on PDAs

THE Government has spent more than €100,000 on personal digital assistants (PDAs) and another €25,000 on briefcases for senior staff since 2002.

PDAs are handheld devices that usually double-up as personal organiser and mobile phone, giving access to email and the internet.

The Department of Agriculture spent €50,000 on PDAs for 85 members of staff, and another €6,140 for 191 briefcases.

The Department of Justice spent €3,672 on 33 briefcases and bought BlackBerrys - one of the most popular type of PDA - for 62 staff. It did not give an overall outlay, but said the cost of BlackBerrys was between €195 and €242. A rough estimate on these figures would indicate at least €12,000 has been spent on the devices.

The Taoiseach’s department spent €836 since June 2002 on briefcases for six staff, and 47 people - including Mr Ahern - got a PDA at a cost of €18,620.

The Department of Communications spent €10,105 on 77 PDAs, but has not finished totalling the expenditure on briefcases.

The Department of Foreign Affairs spent €8,439 on PDAs, but could not give a figure on briefcase expenditure, as many of the overseas embassies would have purchased such items from their own budgets.

Social Affairs spent €6,413 on briefcases.

Responding to parliamentary questions from Fine Gael’s Paul McGrath, Minister Seamus Brennan said: “All of these briefcases have been purchased in bulk and held in my department’s central store from where they are issued as required.”

Eamon Ó Cuiv, Minister for Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs, said his department spent €534.82 on four briefcases.

And he added: “I am of the opinion that the cost of replying to this parliamentary question exceeds the cost of providing briefcases to staff in my department during the last three years.”