State Papers – Day One: Memo shows political expenses an age-old problem

COUNCILLORS enjoying junkets at the taxpayers’ expense caused consternation in the cabinet which was concerned at the bad publicity spendthrift local authority members were generating.

“The Department of Finance have repeatedly made the point that foreign travel on the scale being contemplated by some local authorities for 1980 is inconsistent with the undertaking given by their minister in the budget speech,” said a memo in October that year.

The memo was prepared while 105 councillors were in Brighton at a three-day conference hosted by the British National Housing and Town Planning Council, while a further 44 were due to fly out to a week-long event in Jerusalem in November, organised by the International Federation for Housing and Planning.

Environment Minister Sylvester Barrett wrote to Taoiseach Charles Haughey in September 1980 and raised the question of whether legislation should be introduced to require all travel by councillors to be approved by the government.

A detailed memo on the subject was circulated in late October, by which time Ray Burke had taken over at Environment and Barrett had moved to Defence.

“The prospect of an inordinate attendance of Irish councillors at these venues has concentrated attention on the general problem, which has existed for some years now, of over-representation from this country at certain foreign local government conferences,” the memo stated.

“In 1978, for example, the latest year for which full details have been sought, 257 official trips abroad in all were made by councillors at an aggregate cost of £88,000.”

In the absence of legislation to clip the councillors’ wings, the government was reduced to making appeals to them and relying on “moral persuasion and on the adverse publicity which they generate”. “That they have been less than fully effective is obvious,” said the memo.

However, the memo’s conclusion opposed imposing legislative controls, warning that this could be received as badly as the decision to abolish domestic rates which had centralised control of local authority funding.

“A further centralisation of sanctions in the Custom House might be construed as confirmation of Government hostility to a genuinely democratic system of local government.”

Fear was also expressed that if councillors were deprived of their junkets, they might renew their efforts to get salaries, free postage and a secretarial allowance which might cost considerably more than trips abroad.

The recommendation was that the minister consult with councillors’ representatives and again urge them to rein in their travels, warning them that mandatory legislation would follow if they did not comply.

The matter remained controversial for 30 years until John Gormley introduced conference spending caps earlier this year. The effectiveness of those curbs has yet to be proved.