Anger at €5,900 jet bill for Dáil vote
The Irish Examiner revealed yesterday how the Government frantically dispatched the jet to collect Trade Minister Billy Kelleher from London when it feared it did not have enough votes to approve the reshuffle.
The two-hour round trip cost an estimated €5,900 – a bill that will have to be met by the taxpayer, making Mr Kelleher’s vote an unusually expensive one.
The matter was raised in the Dáil yesterday by Labour leader Eamon Gilmore, who criticised the use of the jet for such purposes. “I cannot see how this could be construed as Government business,” he said. “If Fianna Fáil wanted to fly him home, it should have paid the bill.”
Mr Gilmore then quipped that the Government could have found a cheaper vote elsewhere. “The Government could buy an Independent (TD) for less.”
Meanwhile, a spokesman for Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny has said the party will decide on future pairing requests on a “case-by-case basis”. Pairing is the system whereby a minister, away on official business and unable to make it to the Dáil, is paired with a Fine Gael TD who then abstains from voting in the interests of fairness.
The Government says it dispatched the jet for Mr Kelleher because Fine Gael withdrew his pair at short notice on Tuesday morning.
The Fine Gael spokesman confirmed this was the case, and said the party wanted to put pressure on the Government now that its majority is shrinking. He said the Government would have to demonstrate that a minister was on crucial State business for a pairing request to be granted from now on.
The jet collected Mr Kelleher from London’s Heathrow Airport. He had arrived there on a commercial flight from Australia, where he had been on a state visit.
He was due to take another commercial flight from Heathrow to Dublin on Tuesday night.
But when the Government realised that flight would arrive in Dublin too late it dispatched the jet.
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