Martin’s smoke ban trip cost €24,979

ALMOST €25,000 of taxpayers’ money went towards financing Health Minister Micheál Martin’s trip to New York to assess the effectiveness of the smoking ban.

According to information obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by Medicine Weekly, the minister and five officials from his department racked up the €24,979 bill on the four-day trip, which also took in an excursion to Washington.

The minister’s entourage included Chief Medical Officer Dr Jim Kiely, Secretary General Michael Kelly, the minister’s special advisor, private secretary and press officer.

The bill, at €6,000 per day, did not include accommodation. Outstanding costs relating to accommodation and “miscellaneous associated costs” that were paid by the Irish Embassy in the US have yet to be billed to the Department of Health HQ at Hawkins House. All the party, including the minister, stayed at the Fitzpatrick Hotel in New York and at Jury’s Hotel, in Washington. They arrived on Monday evening September 15 and departed on Friday evening.

Fine Gael Health spokeswoman Olivia Mitchell said it was a huge amount of money to spend on the trip when weighed against all the shortages in the health service.

“There isn’t a single sector of the health service that isn’t screaming for money. I can understand that the ban is a big event, even groundbreaking and I understand it needs investigation, but you wonder could it have been done a little more cheaply than that,” the deputy said.

In defence of the amount spent on the trip, a spokesman for the minister said “it was an official visit with a full programme of events”. The first two days involved meetings with officials from the Health Department in New York city to discuss a range of health issues in relation to tobacco, including the ban on smoking in the workplace.

The minister also visited the Irish Permanent Mission to the United Nations for the formal signing ceremony to the Convention on Tobacco and met with New York mayor Michael Bloomberg to discuss arrangements for administration and enforcement of the ban.

His trip to Washington included a visit to the Command Centre for National Emergencies, which was “live” at the time, dealing with Hurricane Isabel, as well as a meeting with officials of the National Institute of Health.

Mr Martin also took the opportunity to visit a number of hotels and restaurants to see how the smoking ban has been implemented. The ban takes effect in Ireland in pubs, restaurants and places of work on March 29 next.