O’Donoghue silent as more details of luxury trips emerge
His constituency colleague in Kerry South, Independent TD Jackie Healy Rae called on Mr O’Donoghue to stop hiding and account to the people for his excessive spending.
In the course of just six days during his time as Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism, Mr O’Donoghue took eight flights on the government jet, covering four countries.
At a cost of €32,450 for the flights alone, he jetted with his wife to the world’s most glamorous film festival in Cannes, flew home to Kerry for a day then travelled to Wales for a rugby match before flying back to the south of France.
During his two years in charge of the tourism portfolio, he ran up a bill of €75,000 on government jet trips to locations including Venice, Cannes, Stuttgart and London.
This is on top of the €126,000 that Mr O’Donoghue, his wife and an aide spent on official travel expenses staying in some of the world’s top hotels in Los Angeles, Paris, Venice and parts of India.
Since news of his expenses first emerged last week, Mr O’Donoghue has declined a number of opportunities to comment and did not respond to queries about the latest revelations in yesterday’s Sunday Tribune.
Government-supporting independent Mr Healy Rae said: “There is so much controversy about John O’Donoghue now between the jets and the expenses, I think it’s about time he made a statement to explain to the people what happened.”
Mr O’Donoghue, his wife and private secretary travelled from Dublin to Cannes on May 18, 2006, for the city’s glamorous annual film festival where he attended the premier of The Wind that Shakes the Barley.
He was due to stay at the festival for most of the week, but requested the jet to fly home to Kerry for the opening of the offices of the Fexco money transfer in Killorglin. The diversion cost €11,300.
He then flew from Kerry to Cardiff, with a stopover in Dublin, to watch Munster win the Heineken Cup before jetting back to Cannes. He spent three days at the French Riviera resort where he ran up a hotel bill of €990 per night, before using the jet to fly to London for a Ryder Cup promotional event.
Mr O’Donoghue has a history of travel cost controversy after it emerged a four -day visit to New York for him, his wife and two aides cost the taxpayer €27,000.
More than €2,000 of taxpayers’ money was spent on transporting the Ceann Comhairle and the Taoiseach from Dáil business to the reopening of Thomond Park in Limerick last November to see Munster take on the All Blacks.
It has also emerged that Cork East TD Ned O’Keeffe had among the top 10 highest expenses claims of all TDs last year.
His total claim of €69,508 included €1,470 for a three night stay in the five-star Hotel De La Paix, Geneva between September 10 and 13.
On his first day there he incurred a charge of €6.57 for withdrawing currency from a Swiss ATM machine, which he claimed back in expenses.
The top 10 expenses claimants in the Dáil last year shared tax-free claims of €727,382.
Fine Gael TD for Tipperary South Tom Hayes claimed €600 for a phone bill which was run up over seven days he spent in South Africa.
Mayo Fianna Fáil TD Beverly Flynn claimed almost €30,000 for “media services” from a company in her home town of Castlebar.
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